Festival Acadiens et Creole
Lafayette, Louisiana
October 13, 2012
Every time I rave about a weekend or festival here, my Lafayette friends say, “The Festival Acadiens et Creole is better.” They were right. This is the Big Top of Lafayette Festivals.
If you had to pick just one event to give you the astonishing range of Louisiana culture – The Festival Acadiens et Creole would be it. The powder keg of the weekend is the fifty Cajun and zydeco bands that play over 76 hours of music on two large and three smaller stages. Thousands of spectators stream into Girard Park in Lafayette, a good chunk of them from every region of the USA.
The Festival Acadiens et Creole has all the ingredients that make southwest Louisiana unique - food, music, and the local people who make this part of the planet so special.
FOOD
I smell it before I reach the front gate. About twenty of Lafayette’s restaurants and caterers set up vendor tents. The result, especially for a Yankee like pt at large, is jaw droppingly exotic. Walking into the main entrance of Girard Park at 1:00 PM Saturday was like walking a gustatory gauntlet. I’m tempted by the aromas of hot soft-shell crab, seafood and artichoke lasagna, barbecue boudin, crawfish fettuccini, corn and crab bisque, meat pies, catfish courtbouillion, wild game jambalaya that are wafting through the 84 degree sun baked air.
Dessert? Funnel cakes, snow cones, peach cobbler, bread pudding and pralines. To folks around here they are as common as Fenway Franks, clam chowder, or fried clams are to Bostonians.
SHOPPING
Shopping isn’t on pt at large’s to do list but if it were, he’d wear out his credit card. The arts and crafts tent section of the park included wood furniture, jewelry, Houma Indian crafts, gourds, pottery, kaleidoscopes, stained glass, soaps, musical instruments, photography, pen and ink drawings and silk.
CULTURE SUR LA TABLE
(Culture on the Table)
A really cool place to eat lunch and sit down for a spell was the Culture on the Table tent. On one of the rare times I left the music areas, I watched The Dance Troup Dix Acadiens from Nova Scotia perform a dance history of the expulsion of the French Acadiens from Nova Scotia in the 1750s. Most of the other four hourly shows Saturday and Sunday featured local chefs demonstrating ways to prepare pork, boudain, and other specialties from their restaurants and how to use Creole seasonings to give the dishes their signature taste.
KIDS
Scores of young parents pushing strollers or with a few kids trailing along set up camp on the grassy areas within earshot of the stages. Radio stations like KRVS and KBON are the musical version of Sesame Street for kids here. It’s likely that the kids in strollers hear it at home. It’s a good bet that their parents grew up listening to it and probably were taken to places like Randol’s Dance Hall and Restaurant before they were old enough to ride a bike but young enough to learn to dance on their mommy or daddy’s shoes.
This festival is all about reinforcing culture. Although there’s a fenced in playground with state of the art equipment and rubberized ground surface, most kids gravitated to La Place des Petits to listen to storytellers, get their hands on craft making materials, and get their faces painted.
"Festivals Acadiens et Créole invites all the little folks to La Place des Petits! Enjoy French games, crafts, and music focusing on the rich traditional culture of Acadiana. Be sure to check out the tent behind the Folk Roots Workshop near the playground at Girard Park both Saturday and Sunday for tons of fun and a great way for les petits to learn about the heritage of francophone Louisiana."
MUSIC
This is a 76 hour All Star Show. Fifty Louisiana bands perform on five stages from 11 AM to 7:30 PM Saturday and Sunday. By the last set, we’re dancing in the dark. Choices are painful to make. For every minute I spend at one stage I’m missing something equally good on another. Saturday I’m seduced by the well-known musicians on the two big stages. My penance? I miss acts of local musicians like T.K.Hulin (swamp pop), Balfa Toujours (Cajun) and Lawrence Ardoin (Creole) who rarely travel out of Louisiana and are playing on the smaller stages.
The front of the big stages is often lined three or four deep with admirers. Every act brings their A Game. These are their people, musicians put a little extra hot sauce into every song.
GIRARD PARK
500 Girard Park Dr.
With 33 acres of gently rolling hills, the park is a great drawing card. It’s got something for a family, for couples looking for a romantic retreat or a spot to exercise off all that etouffe you’ve been eating. Features include an outdoor pool, 1.25 mile jogging trail, work-out station, covered pavilion with restrooms and grill, open play area, tennis courts, hitting wall, basketball courts, backstop ball diamond, covered picnic areas, restrooms, handicapped restrooms, water fountain, children’s playground with baby equipment, 9-hole disc golf course, four petanque courts, pond, natural wildlife, and historical or commemorative markers. And it’s a great setting for a music festival.
THE PEOPLE
Maybe it's a Southern thing. Eye contact is natural. Just about everyone greets one another walking down the street. Conversations aren't forced but natural. Overhearing local people meeting each other for the first time is a lesson in genealogy as much as geography. Once one's place of birth or residence is established, I guarantee the next one will be "Who's your daddy?" or "What's your mother's maiden name?” or something like, "Are those the Fontenot’s from Carencro or Opelousas?" Once that starts, I've stopped being surprised at how quickly somebody's uncle will be the other person's cousin's brother's fiancée or next-door neighbor. Whoever invented the term "six degrees of separation' would have a field day listening to these conversations.
Whether you’re eating, shopping, or learning how to make a better étouffée sauce at the festival, you can hear the faint sound of music wafting from one of the five stages in the park. Music is the roux that holds everything together in southwest Louisiana. It’s more than entertainment. It’s a common denominator that crosses lines of class, race, age and ethnicity. The Festival Acadiens et Creole earns its title as the Big Top of Louisiana music festivals.
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A few of the Saturday BANDS...
Ed Poullard (fiddle), Preston Frank (accodion) and Friends. The "friends" part is a standard part of nearly every band's makeup, especially at a festival. One of the "friends" might be a headliner from another group, a cousin, nephew or niece who is learning to play, some of them as young as five years old. You wonder whether this music has a future? There's your answer.
The Savoy Family Band, Marc and Ann, sons Joel and Wilson, an enormous pool of talent with the same DNA. Marc Savoy's inspiring bio
Walter Mouton and The Scott Playboys (young and old). "My hands and my
head our just starting to feel good and now it's time to quit!" says
old time accordion player Walter Mouton at the end of his set that began an hour before.
The Lost Bayou Ramblers - If there were metal instruments in the band they'd be a heavy-metal Cajun band. Their loud and gritty style, pleases the crowd with a raucous treatment of traditional music, high amps, crashing of the drums and insistent big assed bass overpowers the violin an accordion but no one seems to mind. The dance floor, or shall we say the dustbowl that was a lawn around eight hours ago, is filled with dancers and fans line up in front of the stage to take pictures and gawk.
By late afternoon, every time the dance floor fills up, clouds of dust kicked up by flying feet are reflected in the setting sun, women's legs are caked in dust. A few people look like desperados, having resorted to wrapping a bandanna around their mouth and nose to filter the rising dust.
Cedric Watson and Creole Bijou; The Red Stick Ramblers
Feufollet includes sons and daughters of other popular Louisiana bands.
Cedric Watson and Feufollet address the crowd in French. These two young bands, Creole and Cajun, want to be sure listeners connect their music with the cultural heritage of southwest Louisiana
BonSoir Catin, up and coming group of Cajun rockers
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