French Louisiana Music And Its Patrons

French Louisiana music emerged from the bayous and prairies of Southwest Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneered by impoverished Acadian and Afro-Caribbean settlers, the sound is marked by a high-pitched fiddle playing loud and fast above the bellow of a diatonic accordion. With lyrics about disaster and heartache sung cheerfully in a French dialect, the effect is dissonant and haunting. French Louisiana music was largely ignored in mainstream music culture, except by a handful of collectors, scholars, and commercial promoters who sought to popularize it. From the first recordings in the 1920s to the transformation of the genre by the 1970s, the spread of this regional sound was driven by local, national, and international elites who saw the music's traditions and performers in the context of larger social, political, and cultural developments, including the folk revival and the civil rights and ethnic revival movements. Patricia Peknik illuminates how the music's history and meaning were interpreted by a variety of actors who brought the genre onto a national and global stage, revealing the many interests at work in the popularization of a regional music.

French Louisiana music emerged from the bayous and prairies of Southwest Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneered by impoverished Acadian and Afro-Caribbean settlers, the sound is marked by a high-pitched fiddle playing loud and fast above the bellow of a diatonic accordion. With lyrics about disaster and heartache sung cheerfully in a French dialect, the effect is dissonant and haunting. French Louisiana music was largely ignored in mainstream music culture, except by a handful of collectors, scholars, and commercial promoters who sought to popularize it. From the first recordings in the 1920s to the transformation of the genre by the 1970s, the spread of this regional sound was driven by local, national, and international elites who saw the music’s traditions and performers in the context of larger social, political, and cultural developments, including the folk revival and the civil rights and ethnic revival movements. Patricia Peknik illuminates how the music’s history and meaning were interpreted by a variety of actors who brought the genre onto a national and global stage, revealing the many interests at work in the popularization of a regional music.

Sara Le Menestrel explores the role of music in constructing, asserting, erasing, and negotiating differences based on the notions of race, ethnicity, class, and region. She discusses established notions and brings to light social stereotypes and hierarchies at work in the evolving French Louisiana music field. She also draws attention to the interactions between oppositions such as black and white, urban and rural, differentiation and creolization, and local and global. Le Menestrel emphasizes the importance of desegregating the understanding of French Louisiana music and situating it beyond ethnic or racial identifications, amplifying instead the importance of regional identity. Musical genealogy and categories currently in use rely on a racial construct that frames African and European lineage as an essential difference. Yet as the author samples music in the field and discovers ways music is actually practiced, she reveals how the insistence on origins continually interacts with an emphasis on cultural mixing and creative agency. This book finds French Louisiana musicians navigating between multiple identifications, musical styles, and legacies while market forces, outsiders’ interest, and geographical mobility also contribute to shape musicians’ career strategies and artistic choices. The book also demonstrates the decisive role of non-natives’ enthusiasm and mobility in the validation, evolution, and reconfiguration of French Louisiana music. Finally, the distinctiveness of South Louisiana from the rest of the country appears to be both nurtured and endured by locals, revealing how political domination and regionalism intertwine.

Queen Ida, Danny Poullard, documentary filmmaker Les Blank, Chris Strachwitz, and Arhoolie Records. These are names that are familiar to many fans of Cajun music and zydeco, and they have one other thing in common—-longtime residence in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are all part of a vibrant scene of dancing and live Louisiana-French music that has evolved over several decades. Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California traces how this region of California has been able to develop and sustain dances several times a week with more than a dozen bands. Description of this active regional scene opens into a discussion of several historical trends that have affected life and music in Louisiana and the nation. The book portrays the diversity of people who have come together to adopt Cajun and Creole dance music as a way to cope with a globalized, media-saturated world. Ethnomusicologist Mark F. DeWitt innovatively weaves together interviews with musicians and dancers (some from Louisiana, some not), analysis of popular media, participant observation as a musician and dancer, and historical perspectives from wartime black migration patterns, the civil rights movement, American folk and blues revivals, California counterculture, and the rise of cultural tourism in “Cajun Country.” In so doing, he reveals the multifaceted appeal of celebrating life on the dance floor, Louisiana-French style.

This reader focuses on the extremely current, important topic of racial and ethnic experiences in the United States today. Most of the essays were commissioned especially for this reader and have been prepared by some of the brightest voices in this cutting edge field. Instructors in search of a current, comprehensive multicultural reader will find this a valuable student resource whether it is the sole focus of their course or to be integrated into another content area.

Showcasing the colorful, even raucous, political, social, and unique cultural qualities of Louisiana history, this new collection of essays features the finest and latest scholarship. Includes readings featuring recent scholarship that expand on traditional historical accounts Includes material on every region of Louisiana Covers a wide range of fields, including social, environmental, and economic history Detailed, focused material on different areas in Louisiana history, including women’s history as well as the state’s diverse ethnic populations

Every June the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, celebrates Franco-American Day, raising the Franco-American flag and hosting events designed to commemorate French culture in the Americas. Though there are twenty million French speakers and people of French or francophone descent in North America, making them the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States, their cultural legacy has remained nearly invisible. Events like Franco-American Day, however, attest to French ethnic permanence on the American topography. In Franco-America in the Making, Jonathan K. Gosnell examines the manifestation and persistence of hybrid Franco-American literary, musical, culinary, and media cultures in North America, especially New England and southern Louisiana. To shed light on the French cultural legacy in North America long after the formal end of the French empire in the mid-eighteenth century, Gosnell seeks out hidden French or “Franco” identities and sites of memory in the United States and Canada that quietly proclaim an intercontinental French presence, examining institutions of higher learning, literature, folklore, newspapers, women’s organizations, and churches. This study situates Franco-American cultures within the new and evolving field of postcolonial Francophone studies by exploring the story of the peoples and ideas contributing to the evolution and articulation of a Franco-American cultural identity in the New World. Gosnell asks what it means to be French, not simply in America but of America.

Indispensable for the student or researcher studying women's history, this book draws upon a wide array of cultural settings and time periods in which women displayed agency by carrying out their daily economic, familial, artistic, and religious obligations. Since record keeping began, history has been written by a relatively few elite men. Insights into women's history are left to be gleaned by scholars who undertake careful readings of ancient literature, examine archaeological artifacts, and study popular culture, such as folktales, musical traditions, and art. For some historical periods and geographic regions, this is the only way to develop some sense of what daily life might have been like for women in a particular time and place. This reference explores the daily life of women across civilizations. The work is organized in sections on different civilizations from around the world, arranged chronologically. Within each society, the encyclopedia highlights the roles of women within five broad thematic categories: the arts, economics and work, family and community life, recreation and social customs, and religious life. Included are numerous sidebars containing additional information, document excerpts, images, and suggestions for further reading.