From cradle to dance hall in Southwest Louisiana

 
When’s the last time you saw six-year-old kids on the dance floor? Or little girls or boys being whirled around the dance floor in their daddy or mommy’s arms?
 
If you lived in Louisiana that would have been last Friday or Saturday night at Randol’s in Lafayette or Saturday afternoon at The Coffee Break in Breaux Bridge.
 
Music and dancing is a huge way of life in southwest Louisiana. Who needs Arthur Murray when you can learn from everybody in the dance hall?
 
Friday night, a young brother and sister alternated sitting in the dining room with their parents and grandparents and skipping hand in hand to the dance hall in the next room.
 

The Cajun band Jambalaya (which played in the Lowell, MA Festival a month ago) kicked out one joyous song after another, all in Cajun French. Some kids sat on one of the wooden benches that surround the hall, visible through the glass partition between the dance hall and the dining room, and watched the adults styling to the music.

A shy blonde eight-year-old girl was busy taking digital photos of every couple that passed by - until her grandfather leaned over, took the camera out of her hands, and led her around the floor in a waltz.

On Saturday night, a pair of six and seven year olds stole the show. Got right out there and did their version of waltzing and two stepping. Adults applauded the two kids as if they were contestants on Dancing With The Stars. They beamed with the attention.
 
Earlier that day at The Coffee Break, the children who came to the Pont Breaux Jam, the weekly Saturday 11 AM to 2 PM celebration of Cajun music, were treated royally. While little brother was being danced around to the Cajun music by his dad, little sister was getting an impromptu waltz lesson by one of the men who’d come in from the Café des Amis.
 
Maybe that explains why places like Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, Angelle’s Whiskey River Dance Hall, McGee’s Landing, and Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf, all in Henderson, and many more places throughout the parishes of southwest Louisiana, are so popular.
 
If there’s a zydeco or Cajun band on the stage, you can bet there’ll be a roomful of men and women working up a lather two-stepping, waltzing, and slow dancing for hours at a time.
 
Music and dance are the glue that holds towns together all over southwest Louisiana. Some day, these little shavers will grow up to be the adults teaching their own kids to dance at Randol’s or The Pont Breaux Jam, or a facsimile thereof. 

Comments

[Alice]

Living in a world where music and dancing are a part of it is wonderful. I
lived in that world as a teenager. My parents belongs to a golf club where
South American dances were done. So my father taught me. The problem I had
was that the smart boys didn't know how to dance. The boys from the other
side of the tracks did. They were the ones I wanted to dance with and
usually did. Of course, this was all before everyone danced alone, or
together alone.

[Rose Anne]

I have relished your Louisiana descriptions, and this one especially warms my heart! I'm really itching to get back there for a visit for the first time since the April before Katrina. Enjoy the rest of your trip!