NPR: COVID-19 Hits Hard For South Louisiana's Cajun Musicians

On Nov 28, 2020, at 4:25 PM, Bernard Ussher sent:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/28/938574647/covid-19-hits-hard-for-south-louisianas-cajun-musicians

My reply to my good friend Bernard who lives in Lafayette, LA.

All  I have to do is look around my own city to see the economic effects of the pandemic. Many of my favorite family owned restaurants shuttered,  maybe for good. Having eaten at their places so  often, I know the owners. I feel their loss and and grieve for lost connections to them...my favorite bars, dive bars, small dance venues, my own barber shop all closed. Some are gone for good. That hurts. 


Practically having a second home with welcoming friends with whom I've stayed in Lafayette for years, what's happening with economic scene in Lafayette is what's happening in my own home town except on a broader scale
.

The ubiquity of music and the merriment of dancing is crumbling as fast at the chunks of ice falling into the sea from icebergs at the poles of the earth. Music and dancing have been embedded in this culture for generations, from  farmers and fishermen to everyday folks. For as far as they can remember, they've relied on it to ease everyday tensions and, as they say down there, "laissez les bon temps rouler"...Let the good times roll. No more.


Some readers of this blog live there. Some of you were born there. Hundreds of people from around America head to SW LA for the sole purpose of joyfully dancing to the music in those parts. 


You've all experienced the dancing, the music, and the inner glow of emotional sustenance that lights us up like two-stepping Roman candles when we partner up on the dance floor. There's the manifest joy of dancing in the dust, in parking lots, muddy fields, dance halls with floors old enough to remember Prohibition, and the camaraderie between dancers and musicians that’s as natural a combination as red beans and rice.

The pandemic hurts musicians in the pocket book and in their own hearts. I’ve danced to so many bands there that I feel like those musicians are part of my family. I know they’re not giving up. It's not in their DNA. Sure they can find a job to put food on the table. Their hearts will still beat but not in 4/4 time. They'll breathe the oxygen but it won’t have whiffs of sweat and BBQ and beer-soaked wood dance floors.


My last trip to Lafayette was to visit Bernard and Rubia on the last days of February and first few of March 2020.  If not for the pandemic, I’d have been down there for festivals and any ‘ol weekend of good company and rousing music a dozen more times. I can still dance in my kitchen. I worry about the people in Lafayette who struggle like my people here.

I worry about the musicians who animate the culture, give it a common rhythm, and don’t get paid to play in their kitchens and don’t make very much on Zoom performances.

Men and women in SW LA miss their Cajun and Zydeco music. Music in this part of the country is not just a weekend thing. And it’s not only a night-time thing. Dancing begins right after your first cup of coffee on Saturday and Sunday mornings and happens every night of the week, and at weddings, public parks, and BYO house parties. Most of the musicians who played on Saturday and Sunday mornings played somewhere the night before, If you think you’re tired, think about that…then leave a good bunch of folding money in their tip jar and buy their CDs.

To me, the gift of music is a survival mechanism. Listening to it juices me up, takes me into an orbit high enough to put the pandemic into a far away box.

John Burnett's NPR story that I read ended with the words "Music — like seafood and family — is the nucleus of Cajun culture. It's not going away. It's just gone virtual.”

Honestly, I doubted that the music and musicians could rebound…until I listened to Burnett’s story with the music embedded inside it.

That’s when I began to believe that, like the crawfish that begin to emerge from the mud of the rice fields that are flooded every autumn, Cajun and zydeco music will survive until the pandemic is controlled enough and then re-emerge to resume all over SW LA.

In the meantime, think of the money you have not spent when flying to Louisiana, staying at motels, dining out, renting cars, paying to enter the dances. Find out a way to send money to the musicians you love and have danced to.

THE BIG PICTURE...
Like looking through binoculars to see in detail, turn the lens around to look at the big picture.


The story is way beyond Lafayette. This is a coast to coast story. You feel it wherever you live. And you can do something about it.

Whether it's musicians who've raised your spirits, mom and pop stores or locally owned eateries or dive bars that are on your weekly glide path, find a way to pay forward your gratitude.

Keep ordering that take out food. Find a local source for what you found on Amazon. Let's transform  "Let The Good Times Roll" to "Let The Pecuniary Gratitude Roll". You can do this.


Give the kind of love that will ensure that all your local faves will be there when the coast is clear and you need them to feed the hole in your life that has become deeper and darker than you'll admit.


Louis Armstrong is said to have signed his letters “Red beans and ricely yours” .
I follow suit,
Red beans and ricely yours,
Paul Tamburello
 
 

Comments

[Helene Huggins]

Paul,
I heard this on NPR and thought of you and Rubia and Bernard and all of the folks you so love and enjoy. So difficult for all musicians and actors and artists around the globe.
Love,H

[Susan McCulloch]

What a sad turn of events for everyone. I am just beginning to realize how deep and far reaching. Well done PT. Is there a specific fund for those musicians who really needhelp?

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

I am on the lookout for a general fund that may be distributed to musicians who apply for it,