pt at large

Festival International de Louisiane: A Sample of Sunday's Bands

Festival International de Louisiane
Lafayette, Louisiana

Sunday Bands April 29, 2012

Canailles (Quebec- Québec Roots), Scene Malibu, Fais Do Do Stage

I didn’t think I could be surprised by anything after hearing the Middle East band Lamajamal and the Slavic Soul Party on Saturday but in the midst of the 1:30 PM Canaille show one of the guys yodels ("J'l'hais" from http://www.myspace.com/bellescanailles)! When they patter with the audience, their English has a heavy Quebecois accent and inventive syntax.  Canaille means "scoundrel" in French and these kids fit the bill with their ragtag blend of country blues cajun and a big shot of garage rock played with guitars, accordion, banjo, standup bass, percussion, washboards (and at least one kazoo!).

Most of their songs are originals.The girl lead singer has great pipes, and has one style that sounds like Grace Slick who swallowed sandpaper ("Becik"  http://www.myspace.com/bellescanailles). The eight musicians (self-taught no less, which may account for their eccentric style) began jamming together  by chance in a Montreal park in 2009. Their set still has the feel of spontaneity. The music is raw, full of twenty-something energy, feels like it could fly off the rails at any time and if it did, they'd laugh at the result.

Canaille VIDEO

Savoy Family Cajun Band (Louisiana- Traditional Cajun), Scene TV5 Monde Lafayette Stage
The Savoy Family Band - what a pile of talent on one stage. Marc and Ann Savoy should donate their DNA to the Smithsonian - their sons Wilson on keyboard and fiddle and Joel on fiddle  are immensely talented as are Marc on accordion (he builds them), Ann on guitar. Red Stick Rambler drummer Drew Simon is on percussion today. This is one of the royal families of Cajun music.

Marc's "Savoy Music Center" in nearby Eunice is considered holy ground by visitors from all over the planet. The brothers Wilson and Joel got into great fiddle duels that had Marc, usually pretty phlegmatic, whoop once or twice. This is the best kind of sibling rivalry. Listening to any of them tell anecdotes about a song they're about to sing is a treat. What's in store might be an old ballad they breathe new life into or a barn burner of a two step.

VIDEO
Dancing to the Savoy Family Band
The Savoy Family Band on stage

Chico Trujillo. (Chile – Cumbia/Punk/Ska/Chilean Folk), Scene Popeye International Stage

Today Chico Trujillo is working their magic at the biggest stage in town, Parc International, a permanent stage with a ton of paved space in front for people to dance and set up their camp chairs. Music and dancing happens so often around here that the city fathers and mothers realized it needed a public space in the middle of town to  accommodate it.

Today's music, like Friday night's, has a distinctive Latin flavor and the crowd is eating it up. The instrumental mix of trumpet, trombone, saxophones, drums, accordion, guitars, is a great platform for the singing. It may be in Spanish but scores of spectators have no trouble interpreting it in to dance moves. Judging by the size of the crowd, Chico Trujillo became a crowd favorite this weekend.Dancing to the Savoy Family Band

VIDEO: CHICO TRUJILLO

LeroyThomas and The Zydeco Roadrunners (Louisiana-Zydeco), Scene Chevron Heritage Stage

Five Louisiana acts perform at various stages today, the last day of the festival. Bands like the Savoy Family Band (Cajun), Andre Thierry (Zydeco), and Leroy Thomas (Zydeco) play for large crowds. The University of Louisiana/Lafayette Jazz Combo and the Destination Gospel Choir make happy music, too. Toward the end of Leroy Thomas's set, the last of the festival, Leroy steps up to the mic. Leroy's cousins are zydeco band leaders Geno Delafose and Keith Frank.

"I want to introduce one of the last living legends of zydeco. Along with Buckwheat Zydeco, my father, Leo "The Bull" Thomas are a couple of the only ones left."
Leo makes a statement standing still. His performance suits are electric pinks, royal blazing blues, and percussive purples and I mean from hat to shoes. So when Leo gets into his hit song, "Why You Gonna Make Me Cry?" dancers grab partners and dance anywhere they find room. He's earned his status as a living legend.
 

The Festival International de Louisiane was selected as Best World Music Festival in the 2012 About.com WorldMusic Reader's Choice Awards. The average attendance over the five day festival is 350,000. The fact that the festival is free, supported by the sale of festival pins and merchandise, and honors the region's Francophone roots, is a matter of great local pride. Spend just one afternoon or evening there and you'll feel it.

VIDEO: LEROY THOMAS

Photos and Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Festival International de Louisiane: A World of Shopping, too!

Saturday April 28, 2012
Lafayette, Louisiana

If you wanted to shop till you drop while you weren't enjoying world class music, the Festival International de Louisiane obliged. Vendor space in both market areas was sold out.

The Marché des Arts featured arts and crafts chiefly from Louisiana: jewelry, sculpture, woodwork, photography, ceramics, original paintings and more.

The Marché du Monde featured African folk art, instruments and clothing; banana leaf art, baskets, seagrass hats, handbags, hammocks, purses, paintings, tapestries, dresses and a wild range of women's clothing and more.

Saturday afternoon, sunny, temps in the eighties, the vendor area was crawling with shoppers. I'm not sure how much they bought, but they were looking real hard.

  

 




   

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Festival International de Louisiane: Gigantic crowds

Saturday, April 28, 2012
Lafayette, Louisiana

By 3 PM, you can probably see Lafayette from the space shuttle.

Lafayette's population is a shade above 120,000. There's a fair chance most of them are crammed into the heart of the city (above) and the spectator areas in front of the four major performance stages within a half mile of each other. Walking down Jefferson Boulevard the only difference from feeling like you're packed into a sardine can is that you're moving… sort of, in a crab-like sideways, forward, stop, shuffle, step, step, stop dance like a giant amoeba high on Bud Light.

You could probably extrapolate the socio-racial-economic profile of Lafayette by observing the shoulder to shoulder crowd. It looks like any midsize city's range of teens just emerging from the chrysalis of childhood to couples and families  of every demographic on the city's census form.

After a few minutes, you realize the island of empty space over the shoulders of the people ahead of you contains someone in a wheelchair, or a stroller, or a little red cart with a two or three little kids in tow.

There are absolutely no rules of the road - just put one foot in front of the other and smile. What's the rush? This is one huge block party. If you’re jostled, more than likely you’ll hear a “sorry” or “excuse me”. If you’re claustrophobic, it won''t be pretty.

++++++++++++++

 

People everywhere...

in coveted areas in the shade ...

no matter where it was found...

on the sidewalk...

buying a party hat or figuring out which band to visit next...

hanging out with giants...

or with friends.

Festival International de Louisiane: A Sample of Saturday's Bands

Saturday April 28, 2012
Lafayette, Louisiana

Red Stick Ramblers, ( Louisiana- Swing/Cajun), Scene Malibu Fais Do Do Stage

...with their rambunctious ways, these are the wise guys of the Festival - irreverent, witty, recklessly spontaneous. There's no telling what any of them will say on stage.  The RSR''s music has a rollicking sensibility charged with the power of a crawfish boat that's scooped up every musical influence on their prairies - cajun, creole, even swing - and plays it out with their assortment of fiddle, guitars, banjo, drums, bass, and accordion.These guys began playing at LSU in Baton Rouge in the late 1990s. They throw a stick of dynamite into roots and country swing music and draw crowds wherever they play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnReIxupwOs&list=UUpO59RlFb0TWCXQLKYfisdA&index=2&feature=plcp




Vishten (Prince Edward Island, Magdalen Islands-Traditional Acadian), TV 5 stage Lafayette Stage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FexsC0aeD8

Pastelle LeBlanc on accordion, her sister Emmanuelle LeBlanc on keyboard and Irish hand held drum (Bodhran), and Pascal Miousse on fiddle and guitar, play rural traditional Acadian music, all the way from Prince Edward Island and the Magdalen Islands in way east of Canada. Pastelle and Emmanuelle make a mighty, clattering, pulsing beat by rhythmically pounding their feet on the black trunks at their feet. Influences from France, Ireland, Scotland drive the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUeR0OZ5QUc

Once again people are on their feet dancing. The dances are jigs that require anything from simple stamping to complicated foot flying footwork in pretty much the same place, not partner dancing, but like Cajun or zydeco can go on for round after infectious round until the fiddler or the dancers are wringing wet with sweat and worries shooed out the door.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql0e8EXhFtU

Pascal vigorously bows his fiddle, the more animated the crowd, gets the more feverishly the band plays. No surprise, people figure out some way to express themselves in dance, mothers with kids in their arms, and twenty-somethings who probably got jiggled around in utero as their mother’s danced well into their terms.

Mercy Brothers, ( Louisiana – Gospel/Hillbilly/ Blues), Scene Chevron Heritage Stage

Three guitars, one bass, a big ol' drum kit, and electric keyboard, this is rock 'n roll come to jesus music, maybe the kind that inspired the Holy Rollers. If you want a gospel blues rock 'n roll country band, covering everything from love to perdition, these are your men. Once again, little islands of people are dancing, the sound system is awesome, and I am in heaven.
http://lineup.festivalinternational.com/band/the-mercy-brothers

Khaira Arby (Mali-Desert Blues) at the Scene Malibu Fais Do Do Stage

Once again Lafayete embraces the exotic, the spectator area is packed, am I repeating myself?  Lafayette has become a musical tapas town where the idea is to sample music you’ve never heard of. Desert Blues sounds intriguing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtci5CDZr9o

Men and women, as partners or solo, make up movement on the spot - trance, free form, or Martha Grahame with a world music twist. At the end of the show, the lead singer Khaira Arby introduces her band in Malian. We have no trouble imagining what she's saying and applaud when she talks about each of her two guitar players, one bass player, and the man behind a big percussion unit. Her two lead guitar players are whizzes. Her singing is enchanting and match her Malian nickname, "The Nightingale of the North".
 

Lamajamal (Middle  East/US-Gypsy Surf)  Scene TV5 Stage

This is the dark horse act of the day. From Vishten to Kaira Arby to Lamajamal one act tops another for sheer exoticism. Imagine the sounds the five of them make with a wild collection of instruments including mandolin, cümbüs (fretless Turkish banjo), drums, our, keyboard, guitar, melodica, accordion, clarinet, sax, flute, dulcimer and percussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAySRTTt0o&feature=youtu.be

One of the musicians says he’s from the West Bank, that a popular dance there is the circle dance. He asks people to form a circle, hold hands, and connect in energy and friendship. Hey, we may be in Lafayette, but today this could be Istanbul or Ramallah, no problem, friends and strangers dance to the joyous music, if there’s one word I will wear out today it is JOYOUS.
http://lineup.festivalinternational.com/band/lamajamal



Texas Tornadoes at Scene Malibu Fais Do Do stage

"These guys are awesome," a guy tells me, obviously in some kind of rapture, "I've been listening to them for twenty years.The original members Freddy Fender and  Doug Sahm died recently but Sahm's son Shawn got the band rolling again. That guy playing the accordion, Flaco Jiménez, he's a legend!" With that he took his friend in his arms and began to dance. So it goes around here. Judging by the crowd, Tex-Music has a big following.

Slavic Soul Party (Balkans/US - Slavic Soul), Scene Malibu, Fais Do Do Stage

This is the greatest kitchen sink band, from one groove to the next they turn on a dime from the middle east to Africa to USA, often  mashed altogether, gypsy, soul, funk, with a collection of  brass, reed and percussion to pull it off. If you can imagine a New Orleans brass band with saxophone, accordion, trombone playing in a Turkish bazaar somewhere in Havana, you might approximate what these guys sound like. Once again, the crowd cheered them ferociously.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

A Chat in Parc Sans Souci

Parc Sans Souci, Lafayette, LA
Saturday April 28, 2012

8:30 PM
Dusk. Parc Sans Souci is filling up. Begin chatting with woman on bench next to the gushing fountains which are now a magnet for a crew of  3,4 and 5-year-olds kids who are in their own charmed waterlogged world. Margaret, a nurse, is about 60, born and raised in Lafayette, has a son 41 years old, another about 30 who is mildly mentally slow, and an 18-year-old daughter who is a free spirit. "Hey, mom," the kid says, "when you were my age you were a hippie, drove around in a Volkswagen bus with a peace sign on the front, why can't I do that, too?" Hard to argue that one.

Her middle son and daughter knew exactly where she is and have to report back at at 9 PM. Her husband is in New Orleans for 2 weeks on a job, everything broke the day he left, - microwave, AC, and more. The woman talks with pride about the bilingual schools that have been opened in Lafayette since 1992, the town seeing a need to revive French after years of the language being reviled as a sign of ignorance. She remembers how if her parents spoke French in school they were punished. Now learning the language is a point of pride. The kids speak French all day long in the school if they choose the French immersion school. And the whole school was in one of the parades that boisterously wound its way up the main street earlier today.

Margaret hails me the next day as I'm watching the band Canaille. While  we chat, she reminisces. Her eyes light up. "When I was a kid, people used to sit around their front porches on Saturday nights, sing songs, dance, and socialize between houses.". Lafayette is full of oral histories like this. Local folks like Margaret are proud to talk about it with interested travelers like pt at large, who begins to understand the culture here better with every spontaneous conversation.

Festival International de Louisiane: Friday Gears Up

Friday Night April 27, 2012
Lafayette, Louisiana


Beats Antique  (U.S.- Electronica/World/Dance),Scene Malibu Fais Do Do stage

Arrive in time to catch the last song by a totally funky group named Beats Antique. They wear masks and cavort about the stage to the tune of their own music. This is as close to a rave scene as I've heard so far, arms raised and waving in unison, the audience looks like a field of wheat swaying in the evening breeze. The band reminds me of an earth-bound Cirque de Soliel with a massive percussion section.

Pine Leaf Boys (Louisiana - Cajun), Scene Chevron Heritage Stage

The Pine Leaf Boys, local musicians with four Grammy nominations. They've revived the old time Cajun songbook and have so much fun doing it that they've captured the allegiance of their parents' generation, their own, and probably the ones to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0QDxkh85a0

The festival is run like clockwork. The shows begin on time and end on time. The Pine Leaf Boys show finishes at 8:59, scheduled to end at 9 PM. When the show is over, it is over. Within minutes tech crews are offloading one band's sound system and replacing it with the next - wires, mics and all.

At the end of the show, an announcer implores us, first in French, then in English, to buy festival pins and artist CDs and festival merchandise in the merchandise tent. This is the way the festival can run in the black and keep this spectacular weekend free to the public.

Lafayette is mindful of the French heritage common to much of southwest Louisiana - it's what binds the festival's music together. Lafayette began a French language immersion program in 1992. Over 1000 students are enrolled now, many more on a waiting list. For one or two generations before this, Cajun kids would get punished for speaking French in school. Pride in culture has been revived in the schools, it was never out of favor in the dance halls and front porches around here.


Lindigo ( Reunion Island-Maloya/Sega), Scene TV 5 Lafayette Stage

The band is as different in appearance and music content as anyone has seen so far this weekend. Listening to it puts most of us as close to Madagascar as we will ever get. As different as this music is, people are embracing it with feel-good enthusiasm. The sound has the same effect as a brass band that gets you to move your feet and get in touch with that spot in your heart that embraces joy and makes you smile. The lead singer has boundless energy. His movements groove and stop with the precision of Lindigo's traditional polyphonic songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWsJCt-mFt4&feature=youtu.be

In case you had any doubt that the spirit is moving, here come a pair of silver haired locals parading in a samba step to the music, teenagers sashaying all over the place - this is happy music, people relate to it, there's a mom holding the handles of her kid's stroller and rocking the kid gently to the beat of the song.

The seven men and one woman on stage play traditional wooden percussion and metal percussion,  no brass and no reed instruments, and one African string instrument. The lead singer paces the stage like James Brown, great moves, relentless energy, at one point the whole band steps and sways together. now I know where The Four Tops and The Persuasions got inspiration for their stage presence back in the 1950s.

Chico Trujillo (Chile – Cumbia/Punk/Ska/Chilean Folk), Scene Malibu Fais Do Do stage,

This Chilean band plays zesty Cumbia music, full of energy. A red, white, and blue Chilean is being waved by a proud compatriot somewhere in the front row. This band throws everything at us - trumpet, trombone, saxophones, drums, accordion, guitars, and soaring vocals. By turns sinuous and full bore rocking cumbia, it's all dance friendly. Hundreds of spectators take the cue, with all kinds of inventive dance moves.


Vagabond Swing (Louisiana–Gypsy/Afro beat/swing) Scene Chevron Heritage Stage

A wild combination if I have ever heard one, it attracts lots of the kids of the Goth persuasion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ka4OD4RUD4&feature=youtu.be

Around 10:45 PM, Gary Clark, Jr. (US–rock), Scene Popeye International Stage

Gary is a phenomenal guitar player, got down and bluesy at end of set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh-K7Xhn3YY&feature=youtu.be

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Victor “Frenchie” Kilchrist, WWII Vet, Peanut Vendor, Raconteur Part 3

Corner of Vermilion and Jefferson
Downtown Lafayette, Louisiana during Festival International de Louisiane
April 27, 2012

This is Vic  "Frenchie" Kilchrist's 24th year on the corner of Vermilion and Jefferson. "I sold 12 bags of peanuts on my first day!" he chuckles. The 91 year-old Navy veteran sets up his venerable peanut roasting machine and vendor cart here every Mardi Gras and Festival International de Louisiane. It's a destination for hundreds of locals, as much for the chance to say hello to Vic as to fill their stomachs with fresh roasted peanuts. I first met him on this corner in March 2011 and visited him again during Mardi Gras 2012.

"I've been buying peanuts from you since I was 5 years old," says the young man as he hands over his cash. "When my grandfather first took me to the Cajun dome and bought me six bags of peanut he made me a happy kid," says the happy customer.

A woman comes to buy a sack. “I could smell your peanuts all the way down the street” she says, as she reaches into her purse.

Vic’s nephew Buddy Toups shows up.His mother was Vic’s sister who passed away a few years ago. Buddy’s daughter, a strapping seventh grader who plays on her school team likes first base most but plays second and pitches when she's asked. It's a cinch that Vic would love to see her go to the University of Louisiana Lafayette. He rarely misses one of the girl's softball games there.

 

Another regular shows up. "I've been stopping here for 20 years," he says cheerfully.  He reminisces with Vic about the time the city fathers tried to kick him off the corner and a heavyweight friend of Vic's intervened. Vic reaches under his vending display window and pulls out a copy of the legal rule that allows him to do business there.

Vic finishes a WWII anecdote he started telling me earlier. He pulls a worn black and white photo of him and the flight crew on the highly decorated USS Suwanee, a light carrier that earned its battle stars in the Pacific. Buddy has apparently never seen it.

"Are you off yet?" Vic says to the uniformed black woman who springs for a bag of unsalted roasted peanuts. "Nope, got an hour to go," she says and stuffs the bag in her pocket.

At the end of the day, Vic will roll his equipment into the back of the Greek restaurant next door, an arrangement he's had for years with his fellow business man. By the way, he now sells his bags of fresh roasted peanuts by the hundreds.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 

Festival International de Louisiane: Thursday Opening

 Thursday, April 26, 2012, UPDATED

Lafayette, Louisiana

Narrative to follow, having too much fun to write...look at this schedule. The fact that most Americans have never heard of most of these bands is a non-issue. The promoters have an ear for music that is connected with the predominantly French culture of southwest Louisiana.

In the words of the organizers…
“Festival International de Louisiane is a community-based, non-profit arts organization formed in 1986 to produce an annual visual and performing arts festival celebrating the French cultural heritage of southern Louisiana - primarily a combination of French, African, Caribbean and Hispanic influences.”

Every music act on each of the five major stages is introduced in French and English. Wandering up and down the streets of downtown Lafayette, I’ve heard French with Cajun, Canadian, and African accents. Thousands of people jammed the center of Lafayette Thursday night. This is the biggest, friendliest block party in the world.

By 7:15 Thursday night, the festival was ON...

Ce Qui Marchent Debout (France - Brass Funk)- Scene Malibu, Fais Do Do Stage

These guys rock. Big-time fusillades of brass, trumpets, saxophone and a percussion system with power that could back up a fracking machine. You can feel the vibration in the pavement under your feet.  These guys are  a grab bag of everything, rock funk Latin rumba and a little bit of rap llte and it’s no small wonder thousands of bots are shimmying to the beat of this cosmic party band.

Soul Express Brass Band (Louisiana - Brass) Opelousas's first Brass Band

Heading back down Jefferson, I hear the unmistakable "taa daa daa daa daaaaa daa..." of a New Orleans brass band. The Soul Express is holding court on the corner of Jefferson and Vermillion, the epicenter of the festival.

Nothing in the world sounds like a New Orleans brass band. The sheer raw firepower of pealing trumpets, glissando raking trombones, a big bad tuba, crackling snare drums, and one booming bass drum, with that particular rolling thunder New Orleans rhythm that inspires foot stomping booty shaking hand clapping behavior from anyone with a beating heart.  Little girls hold hands and dance around in circles. Their big sisters and brothers groove right behind them. I don’t know how spontaneous Lafayette residents usually are, but here they are shaking just about everything God gave them to the beat of the band.

Bombino (Niger - Desert Rock) on the Scene Popeye International Stage

Vocals in Tuareg, band led by led by Omara "Bombino" Moctar, a young Tuareg guitarist from Niger, driven by three guitars and one gigantic drum set that packed the power of a summer storm.

Joel Savoy's Honky Tonk Merry Go Round (Louisiana - Honky Tonk)

A rare event, music inside and not on a big stage outside where they will play later this weekend, Joel Savoy's Honky Tonk Merry Go Round plays at Antlers, a bar on Jefferson. Ample sized stage and dance floor make for happy people. Joel's parents Mark and Ann Savoy were in the audience as were fellow musicians who come onstage to jam. The next day a friend told me Wayne Toups stopped by and sang a George Jones country song with the band. That must have been just this side of spectacular.

Scene Popeye, International Stage, Robert Randolph Family Band (US - Funk/Rock/Soul)

The first song got my attention but as the set war on the band devolved into a mellow Grateful Dead groove, music that meandered, then occasionally exploded with Robert Randolph's impressive frenzied solos. 11 PM, time to head to my motel.

Photos by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

 

Courtbouillon: A Musical Stew at the Festival International de Louisiane

Courtbouillon at The Blue Moon Saloon
Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Forget that this is a show in a jam packed commercial venue. The three guys sitting side by side on the stage of the Blue Moon Saloon are in their own world. From the feeling of camaraderie onstage, Wilson Savoy on fiddle, Wayne Toups on accordion, and Steve Riley on guitar could be jamming on Wayne’s front porch. Wayne sits in the middle and is the engine pulling this train headlong down a Cajun line that stops in every town in the prairie.

“This next song is the Crowley Two Step,” Wilson Savoy announces as the second song rolls by. It’s one of the few songs they’ll identify by name during the two-hour love fest. Most of the crowd packing the saloon knows the names already. Even pt at large recognizes the melodies of songs he’s heard in previous trips to Lafayette.

You can’t sing Cajun songs without having felt the sting of sorrow or joy of love or the fun of living on the edge. The more Wayne Toups sips whatever is in the little black plastic cup at his side, the deeper into the bayou his songs reach. He’s not just singing lyrics, he’s singing the heritage, culture, and pride that exudes from every cell in his body.

Toups sings with vitality bordering on urgency, every so often letting out a whoop of pure enjoyment following it with a finger-flying flourish on buttons of his accordion and a few fierce foot stomps for good measure. His face soaked in sweat, a diamond earring flashing in the stage light, he banters with Savoy and Riley. After one especially playful duel with Savoy’s fiddle, a big smile spreads across Toups’ craggy face and he claps Savoy on the shoulder.

How often can you listen to three musicians, each famous in his own right, share the same stage? What pulled them together is their love of and prodigious knowledge of Cajun music. The songs these guys sing were old when they first heard them. They reach as far back as Amadee Ardoin, a Creole accordion player who is one of the fountainheads of Creole and Cajun style music and whose songs were some of the first recordings of this region’s music in 1929.

They first teamed up to play a year ago. They don’t appear together often so when it happens, it’s a huge draw. They’re sort of like earth, wind and fire. Toups provides the fire on accordion, Wilson Savoy, intently listening to his mates, provides the playful airy and wistful tones on his diminutive fiddle, Steve Riley, more reserved, is the earthy presence that keeps the show in an orbit fixed on their shared heritage. No drums are needed for this group. Eric Frey, standup bass player for The Red Stick Ramblers and The Revelers, keeps the backbeat in check.

A Courtbouillon (COO-be-yahn) is a thick, rich fish stew, brimming with Acadian flavors. Two hours of Cajun two-steps (like “Quel Etoile”) and pretty waltzes flash by in less time than it takes to simmer a courtbouillon. The songs have been sung in French…a fitting way to begin the next four days of the Festival International de Louisiane.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Festival International de Louisiane: World Class Music

April 26, 2012
Lafayette, Louisiana

pt at large is in Lafayette, Louisiana for the 26th Annual Festival International de Louisiane, five days worth of music and mingling, food and fun, dining and dancing. In the first two days here, I've met Pastel and Pascal of the band Vishten from the Magdalen Islands located in the Gulf of St Lawrence, listened to bands from France,Niger, and the good old USA. This is the biggest street party int the world.

"Festival International de Louisiane is truly a community event drawing together approximately 1,500 volunteers from all segments of the community to work together to celebrate both our diversity and the common human experience that binds us together. Through the arts presented and the joint efforts to produce it, the festival contributes to the spirit of community that is so unique to the Acadiana region.

The annual 5-day festival is held during the last full week of April. Historic downtown Lafayette, Louisiana, is transformed into an entertainment complex featuring six music stages, food court areas, street musicians and animators, arts and crafts boutiques, art galleries, beverage stands, cultural workshops, international cooking demonstrations and a world music store."

The festival was recently voted "Best World Music Festival" in the About.com WorldMusic Reader's Choice Awards.
Stay tuned for reports from Lafayette...

Photo of "Bombino" playing on the Scene Popeye Stage by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

32,000 feet

April 25, 2012

32,000 feet
AA Flight 2780

Commotion. The flight attendant barrels down the aisle, pushing the beverage cart to the rear of the plane." We have a medical emergency. Is there a doctor or nurse on the flight who can assist us?"she calmly says in the PA system. Thirty seconds later she rushes back and straps an oxygen mask around the face of the man sitting across from me. She calmly keeps up a steady patter, trying to keep him conscious and engaged until help arrives. The fellow has apparently fainted and is recovering.

Another passenger steps up and begins to talk with the stricken fellow. "Would you mind switching seats with me so i can keep an eye on things?" he asks me.

Seconds later I'm sitting beside Lisa Guillory. "My husband's a neo natal doctor. I'm a nurse, my husband's an Irishman from St. Louis and we live in Columbia, Missouri."

"Well, I'm Paul from Boston and I'm going to spend the next few days at the Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette," says  I.

"I was raised in Cajun country, a mostly Catholic area in the bayou area south of Route 90." She draws me a map of the "boot" of Louisiana, "Pretty much everything south of Route 90 is Cajun country," she says. "I grew up playing in the swamps with my brothers. One of them lives near Lafayette. My parents are in their 80s and live in Lafayette. My husband and I come down to check on them pretty often."

"I'm learning how to play the saxophone!" Lisa says. "My instructor's son is playing tonight at ARTmosphere and we're going to check him out." Too bad I'll be at The Blue Moon to listen to Courtbouillon or I'd join them.

"I'm always amazed at how friendly people around  Lafayette are. Is that a Southern thing?" i ask. She laughs. "Only a Yankee would ask a question like that. Northern Missouri is more Midwest than South, with rolling hills more like Iowa. The southern part of Missouri is more like Mississippi and Arkansas, and more Southern."

I tell LIsa that a friend of mine, originally from Alexandria, Louisiana, tells me that the people south of Alexandria are much more friendly. She was shocked at the difference just 90 miles away. Back in Alexandria people were  more distant and mostly Protestant whereas the people from Cajun country are mostly Catholic. She thought culture had more to do with it than religion. She moved down here to be in the midst of it.

So there you have it. A small world  sociological story at  32.000 feet.

American Airlines Admiral's Club: First Class Comfort

The Admiral’s  Club in Dallas... OMG what a revelation to an economy class pilgrim. American Airlines has sent me a complimentary pass. They may as well have offered me crystal meth.

Blissfully quiet, spacious, civil. Concierges stationed at the entrance answer your every question. Daylight pouring through ceiling to floor plate glass windows splashes into the lounge peppered with pods of couches, chairs, tables, an enclosed area for smokers, and another enclosed business area with computers, printers, and fax machines at the ready. A counter lined with coffee, tea, bottled water, fresh fruit, salties, cookies, all free of charge, is tucked in back portion of room.

WiFi? Just open your device and click away. There are vast peaceful areas of the club with no plasma TVs blaring. A full service bar serves sandwiches, salads, sushi, breakfast items, and assorted entrees.

No waste baskets. The wait staff glides silently through the club to pick up empty coffee cups, drink glasses, stray napkins, remains of lunch or dinner. Family room? Yep. Clean bathrooms? Yep.

I am hooked.

The Atwater Market: Local Food Rules In Montreal

Marché Atwater
138 avenue Atwater
À l'angle des rues Notre-Dame et Atwater (at the corner of Notre Dame and Atwater)
Montréal QC  H4C 2H6

Friday, April 20, 2012

If you’re a foodie, you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven. Even if you’re just a plain vanilla appreciator of nourishment like pt at large, you’ll be dazzled by a visit to the Atwater Market in Montreal, Quebec.  The word cornucopia comes to mind.
 
If it grew or was harvested or produced within trucking distance of Montreal, it is here:  vegetables, fish, cheese, flowers, confections, wines, beers, artisanal drinks, pates, and meat of every variety. And a bakery stocked with goodies that stuns your imagination and short circuits your ability to choose just one or two delectables to go with your latte. You simply want to camp out there until you’ve tried every kind of croissant, cake, torte, cookie, pie, bread and baguette.  By the time I walked down the market's two football field sized floors in the concrete and steel building, I was in a daze. Oo la la.
 
When my traveling companion asked for a selection of local cheeses, the young man behind the glass case at The Fromagerie Atwater said, “How about a sample of one hard cheese, one medium and one soft cheese.” He sorted through a pile of cheeses in the case, found what he wanted, gave us small wedges to sample, listened to our assessnents, and homed in on ones that matched our tastes. In the midst of the process, he motioned us to come behind the counter to see a map of the regions where the cheese was made and found a copy of the map for us to take with us.

He was cheerful, knowledgeable and appreciated our desire to learn about the products he knows from the cow to the counter. The store also sells delicatessen items, Quebec and imported micro brewery beers, and speciaty items. We could have stayed there for hours. The cheeses, by the way, were fabulous.

The hard cheese was LOUIS D'OR  aged 24 months, priced at $58.99/kg from Fromagerie du Presbytere St. Elizabeth de Warwick. The soft cheese was KENOGAMI d'Hebertville. The medium cheese was consumed before I had a chance to record the label!

The Atwater Market is one of four huge markets and 11 neighborhood markets and flower kiosks designed to give Montrealers access to food and horticulture produced locally. In 1993, 250 farmers and vendors formed an alliance under the Corporation de Gestion des Marches Public de Montreal. The four huge public markets are located in historic buildings in different parts of Montreal and all steps from Metro stations. They've been enlarged and modernized and are hubs of activity every day.

The market was built in 1933 at a cost upward of one million dollars, a pretty steep pile of cabbage back then. In addition to the boutiques inside and on the perimeter of the building, the market’s third floor has a sprawling room that can hold 10,000 people for social and political events, a new twist on the food for thought theme.
 
My travel companion and I departed the market with bags filled with local "snow crab" legs (see photo below), maple sugar sweets, fresh roasted almonds and maple roasted cashews, a crusty loaf of olive bread, the aforementioned cheeses from the Lac St Jean area north of Montreal. We had tasted micro brews of blueberry (yes, blueberry), raspberry, and peach beer, and sampled a two-year-old cheese that the marketer hasn’t even devised a name for yet. As an afternoon bracer, I had a tasty latte and inhaled two almond croissants that made me want to move to Montreal.

Judging by the quantity and quality of the food in the Atwater, Montrealers take food seriously. I’m sure there are microwave ovens in their kitchens but I’ll bet they don’t spend much time defrosting frozen foods. Vive la Marché.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Jean Talon Market, another of the four huge public markets reviewed by  pt at large in July, 2010

 

Oo laa laa...

Check here to see if the veggies you want are in season


Local "snow" crab (photo at right that is only harvested for six weeks in April and the beginning of May. Freshly steamed on the premises at Capita1ne Crabe's so it couldn't be any fresher. So sweet it would be a crime to put sauce or butter of any kind on it.

pt at large could have camped out at this boutique for days

Everything here fresh, clean, and presented with care

Everything from soup to nuts

Just one more look...

Janiva Magness: Rip Roarin' Blues at the Regattabar

Janiva Magness
Regattabar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA
April 4, 2012
7:30 PM show

Janiva Magness is not one to mail in a performance. The sultry singer torched the place at the Regattabar Wednesday night. I’ll be honest. I’d never heard of her before a friend with solid musical instincts suggested we take in her show.  Good idea.

Magness is on tour to celebrate the release of her album “Stronger For It.” She sang every one of the dozen songs on the *record, the tenth album in her 35-year career. If the CD has the same power as her live performances it might catch on fire. That’s exactly what Magness did after about the third or fourth song in the set, “Whistlin’ in the Dark,” a bittersweet ballad of love lost.

Fronting the band like a cat on a hot tin roof, she tossed her mane of lustrous black hair as she prowled the stage and made great eye contact with the audience. Sitting behind me, a pair of fifty something female teachers from a local private school whooped and hollered after each of Magness’s songs of gritty survival, carnal appetite, and reflective sorrow. If James Brown has a modern female counterpart, it could be Magness.

Like Brown, she had a rough upbringing. Both her parents committed suicide when she was a teenager, she got pregnant, gave up her baby, and ended up in a foster care system. She’s had a first name relationship with the blues since then.

Tonight’s band is her well-oiled quartet (sorry I didn’t get the names): lead guitar, bass, B3 and a drummer from Marshfield whose dad was in the audience. They seemed psyched to be playing for a lively full house that ate up each and every one of their boss’s R&B and straight ahead take no prisoners blues.

Dressed in a tight black sleeveless outfit, she worked up a sweat early. There’s nothing laid back about a Janiva Magness performance, she lights into you and doesn’t quit till the house lights go up.

She pauses between songs to tell us things that matter to her.  Early in the set, it was the transformative moment in her young life when she snuck into a club and heard Otis Rush. The urgency of his singing matched her quiet desperation. “That’s what I want to do,” she thought.

A 2009 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year (only the second woman to ever win this award, Koko Taylor being the first), three time Contemporary Blues Female Artist Of The Year, and eleven previous Blues Music Award nominations show that she succeeded. Magness can interpret songs by the greats with passion. Most of the songs on “Stronger For It” are hers. Her intense delivery comes from some dark place within her that demands to be heard.

Late in the set she talks about her teenage pregnancies, giving up her baby, her time in foster care homes (“They saved my life”).

It’s matter of fact, low key, and her way of connecting with us personally. That’s why, when she mentions her association with foster care at the end of the show, we know it’s her way of showing gratitude for overcoming a part of life that some performers might rather hide than reveal. (She is a national spokesperson for Casey Family Programs National Foster Care Month Campaign).

Before singing her last song, Magness invites Boston blues legend Ronnie Earl to the stage. Magness’s guitar player slipped his white fender guitar off his shoulders, handed it to Earl, then grabbed the B3 player's camera to record Earl’s solo, a classic undulating riff so perfectly sinuous that the elegant Regattabar seemed to transform into a smoky, sweaty roadhouse.

One song later and the evening show ends.

“Give this old lady of 55 a hand,” Magness says after thanking us for showing up. We spring to our feet.  This is clearly a woman with something to say, something to prove, and the chops to do it.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Janiva Magness greets fans after the hour and a half show. The warm smile she flashes belie a life that could easily have been derailed by homelessness, drugs, and family tragedies.

*"Stronger For It" Tracklist:
01 – There It Is
02 – I Won’t Cry
03 – Make It Rain
04 – Whistlin’ in the Dark
05 – I’m Alive
06 – Ragged Company
07 – You Got What You Wanted
08 – I Don’t Want to Do Wrong
09 – Thought I Knew You
10 – Dirty Water
11 – Things Left Undone
12 – Whoop and Holler

Long Day's Journey Into Night: Powerful Portrait of Family Dysfunction

EUGENE GLADSTONE O'NEILL b. Oct. 16, 1888, New York, N.Y., U.S. d. Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass. foremost American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. His masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night (produced posthumously 1956), is at the apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933), and The Iceman Cometh (1946). http://www.eoneill.com/biography.htm

O'Neill's style has been called "tragic realism." The current production at the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown cements this description.

Long Day's Journey Into Night
A Drama by Eugene O’Neill

Directed by Scott Edmiston; Janie E. Howland, scenic design; Charles Schoonmaker, costume design; Karen Perlow, lighting design; Dewey Dellay, sound design; James Wilkinson, properties design

New Repertory Theatre
Watertown, MA
April 1, 2012 - April 22, 2012

Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer winning play is unrelentingly bleak. The humor, when it surfaces, is dark and evanescent. The demons that writhe within each character in the Tyrone family are DNA deep.

O’Neill compresses his own Irish family’s tragic history into one summer day set in a beach house on the foggy Atlantic shore. At three and a quarter hours, it’s grueling for an audience to absorb the badgering, the airing of past regrets and recriminations between Mr. James Tyrone (Will Lyman), Mrs. Mary Cavan Tyrone (Karen MacDonald), and their two sons, James Jr. (Lewis D. Wheeler) and Edmund (Nicholas Dillenburg). The play begins at breakfast and ends in the dark of night.

In order for this play to rumble down the runway and rise above the pull of gravity, it has to gather momentum and lift off with updrafts of emotional catharsis, personal growth, or expiation for wrongdoings.

Monday night’s performance of Long Day’s Journey Into Night was a long journey down a winding, dark runway. The evening’s most pivotal scene, a raw declaration of love/hate relationship between the two brothers, didn’t seem to overcome the grip of gravity and free anyone in the family. Eugene O’Neill was working through the disturbing dysfunctionality of his own family. It’s a wonder he survived.

To make the play fly, I wanted to feel that the embers of love between husband and wife, parents and sons, brother and brother, were not eternally extinguished. As well as the actors played their parts, I didn’t feel it. I felt their brittleness, and I saw the pain they had inflicted on each other as they constantly picked at scabs of emotional wounds from battles past. And maybe that’s the point.

Having felt no love from their own parents, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Tyrone is capable of lavishing love on their children. The effects are poisonous. Self-loathing, denial and blame are the family’s common vocabulary. Drink, drugs and delusion are their prescriptions for dulling the pain.

Will Lyman and Karen MacDonald in Long Day's Journey Into Night. Photo by Andrew Brilliant

Will Lyman as James Tyrone gives an extraordinary and visceral portrayal of a man utterly incapable of acknowledging his failures as a husband and father, and of grasping the cost to his wife and sons. They, and we in the audience, wait - hope -  for even one small act of love or kindness from the man that demonstrates his humanity. It never comes.

The only regret Mr. Tyrone can bring himself to admit, in a boozy scene with his son James in the waning moments of the play, is a poor business decision he made when running his own theater company. It could be a moment of insight but he loses a chance to shed his self-absorbed nature in order to extoll his prowess as an actor.

Karen MacDonald as Mary Cavan Tyrone is often distractingly melodramatic in gesture and utterance but effectively portrays a woman losing her tenuous grip on reality as she relapses into drug addiction. A scene in the waning minutes in which she abandons all her moorings on reality and is devoured by abject despair is one of the defining moments of the play.

Nicholas Dillenburg as Edmund Tyrone and especially Lewis D. Wheeler as James Jr.  play the roles of emotionally stunted brothers who don't have a ghost of a chance to live intact lives in this love-starved summer home.

If confession is what O’Neill was after, he got it. If absolution was what he wanted, none of his characters seemed to receive it.  Like the pervasive fog that disorients time and space outside the Tyrone summer home, the characters are lost within themselves and to each other. As the footlights dim on the final scene, I feel dread for the family’s future. A faint flicker of hope or humanity seems out of reach, or lost in fog so thick it will never lift.

A long day’s journey into night is done…and so are the Tyrones.

"Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom": Powerful Drama Set in 1927 Resonates Today

"Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom"
A play by August Wilson
Director Liesl Tommy; Scenic and Costume Designer Clint Ramos; Lighting Designer Marcus Doshi; Original Music, Sound Design, and Music Direction Broken Chord; Production Stage Manager Leslie Sears; Stage Manager Kevin Robert Fitzpatrick

Boston University Huntington Theater
264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
Running time 2 hr, 45 minutes with one 15 minute intermission
Play runs through Sunday April 8 at 2 PM.

The scourge of racism might be America’s original sin. Playwright August Wilson (1945 - 2005) spent a lifetime writing plays about the African American experience. It’s as complex a story as you’ll find in American history.

After writing "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom," Wilson realized he’d written plays set in three different decades. In the 1980s he decided to write a play for the rest of the decades of the twentieth century. The plays are known as The Pittsburgh Cycle. Having a white father but raised by his black mother, he grew up in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood in which nine of the ten plays in the cycle take place. When he writes about threats and hostility it’s not academic, he’s lived it.

"Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom" boils over with the themes that become the hallmarks of August Wilson’s dramas: hopes and aspirations of black Americans set within a social and racial framework that stack the odds against them.

By 1927, the Great Migration is well underway. Millions of black Americans have moved north to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. It’s clear after the first few minutes of "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom" that Chicago doesn’t hold out the welcome mat for them.

Unless they could sing or dance or play music.  The music industry is the lens Wilson uses to drill down to racial disparity of the 1920s.  "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom" takes place in a dingy recording studio in Chicago. It’s clear from the start that Ma's agent Irvin and record producer Sturdyvant are parasites. Ma Rainey and her musicians are their cash cows, useful for as long as they can milk them.

Slow Drag (Glenn Turner),Levee
(Jason Bowen),Toledo (Charles Weldon),Cutler (G. Valmont Thomas) Photo T. Charles Erickson

Irvin and Sturdyvant realize that black musicians in South Chicago are creating the most innovative music in town. The big band music in North Chicago is pure white. In segregated Chicago, they won't share a stage with Ma Rainey or her black musicians but have no trouble copying (polite word for steal) arrangements they hear when they flock to after-hours joints on the South side.

The three-tier set at the Huntington Theater is a perfect metaphor for the times. At the left of the stage, a steep stairway leads to the office in which recordings are controlled. Half the left side of the stage is set as the recording studio, a tier below that on the right side is the rehearsal room in which the musicians practice. Top to bottom, that pretty much explains how power is distributed in the 1920s.

Ma Rainey’s band has shown up at 1 PM to record a new song. Ma, the famous Blues singer and diva of the first order, is late. Most of the play’s action takes place in the rehearsal room. While waiting for Ma to show up, the four musicians in Rainey’s band tell stories, argue, and engage in one-up-man-ship.  

Wilson sets up a brilliant dialectic between young and ambitious trumpeter Levee and piano player Toledo, a generation older. It sounds like a conversation Wilson is having with himself to illuminate the nascent sense of possibilities in which blacks can make their own way in a white society and the reasons why that’s not going to happen.

Wilson’s ear for dialogue is unrelentingly authentic. He wants to capture a moment in time. There is not one whiff of PC language here and plenty of candid talk about the cruelties the characters have experienced at the hands of white people. Toledo's philosophizing about the nature of race and the place of blacks in a white society is eccentrically incisive and at odds with Levee's confidence that his new jazz-oriented arrangements will get him fame and fortune.  

Their experience of discrimination and the means the characters devise to survive it act as a bond to link them together no matter what their politics. The exchanges between Levee and Toledo will echo in your mind long after the play ends.

The casting of Levee (Jason Bowen), Toledo (Charles Weldon), and Ma Rainey (Yvette Freeman) is especially strong.  Everyone else – Ma Rainey’s white agent Irvin (Will Lebow), record company owner Sturdyvant (Thomas Derrah), Ma’s musicians Cutler (G. Valmont Thomas), Slow Drag (Glenn Turner), Ma’s nephew Sylvester (Corey Allen), Ma’s girlfriend Dussie Mae (Joniece Abbott-Pratt), and white Policeman (Timothy John Smith) pulls his or her weight with vigor.

The play barrels with the momentum of freight train into its unexpected final scene. The white people in the audience get a version of history not captured in school books as Wilson starts working out how race relations got to the 1980s from the 1920s.