Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #117 (April/May 2005).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Creole Fiddling

Louisiana's Prodigal Son

Creole Fiddling

by Dan Willging

By now, it is history -- and provocative fodder for ethnomusicological discussions. Though it was once thought that Cajun music would be extinct by the new millennium -- Cajun musician Bee Cormier read a despairing opinion on the back of an album jacket in the early 60s -- today interest in the music shows no signs of losing steam. Young people across Acadiana have begun to embrace the music of their forebears with intense passion, and the seeds of the Cajun Renaissance that were planted in the 1960s-70s have germinated into a veritable orchid.

A similar revival in the past 20 years has occurred with zydeco, the sister to the music played by the Acadian descendants exiled by the British from Nova Scotia in 1755. Although no one has ever officially proclaimed the re-awakening of interest in zydeco a "renaissance," today's version of the steamy Afro-Caribbean/blues/R&B-influenced music played by Louisiana's French-speaking Creoles is a far cry from its early 80s scene, once described by Terrance Simien as "an old man's game."

Before there was any scholarly distinction between Cajun and zydeco music, Cajun and Creole musicians held their music in common. To them, it was only "French music," since it was sung in French. Many Cajuns and Creoles also thought of themselves as Frenchmen since French, of course, was their native tongue.

Cultural traditions, in general, are built on many components, and for a long time it seemed as if one of Creole music's essential cogs, the art of Creole fiddling, was slipping into oblivion. Canray Fontenot, one of the greatest practitioners of the Creole fiddle, succumbed to cancer in August 1995. Amazingly enough, the 72-year-old was one of the younger laureates of an esteemed class that included contemporaries Calvin Carrière, his uncle Joseph "BéBé" Carrière, and Carlton Frank (the great-uncle of popular zydeco icon Keith Frank). Fontenot's passing left a void in the lives of many, including a couple of his better-known protégés, D'Jalma Garnier and Edward Poullard, who had both benefitted from Fontenot's tutelage, courtesy of Texas Folk Life Resources.

There had never been an abundance of Creole fiddlers, as Garnier, who had spent years as fiddler with the Cajun band Filé, recalled from a conversation with elder statesman/accordionist Bois Sec Ardoin. "Mr. Bois Sec told me there was never that many guys playing it, but there was always just someone playing it. And there will probably be somebody playing it," he said. Because the tradition of Creoles playing fiddle appeared to be on the verge of extinction by the 90s, the calm reassurance of Ardoin, who had enjoyed a lifelong friendship and musical partnership with Fontenot, seemed hard to swallow.

"I couldn't quite accept that," Garnier continued. "It wasn't my job to. He had the history, and he had seen it. I had already made these promises and put my goals to this is what I was going to do, trying to keep it going with Ed, just to keep it from becoming extinct because all kinds of people were worried that it was."

[cover #117]