Posted by Martyn Day
on December 10, 2007, 12:54 pm, in reply to "Cajun UK the future -- personal conclusions"
83.104.36.134
I’ve been playing in Cajun bands since the mid 80’s and once helped run a successful Cajun club in Manchester where we regularly had people queuing round the block to get in. The secret of our success? The club was Cajun by name, but not strictly Cajun by nature. Although there was always a Cajun band on the bill, along with Cajun food and Cajun dance lessons, the evening always included bands playing other types of American folk music – blues, bluegrass, skiffle, rock ‘n’ roll and country. In the course of an evening the Cajun dancers could do their fancy stuff but still leave plenty of time and room for other dancers to burn a hole in the floor.
We all know that nothing can clear a club faster than po-faced Cajun dancers who insist that all tunes are played to authentic tempos and anoraked ‘fans’ who get uppity when bands start singing in English or moving away from the traditional repertoire.
There will be many who remember how music was bedevilled in the 50’s by ‘experts’ who insisted that only black men could sing the blues and required folk music to be performed in the traditional form. Even Ewan MacColl, probably the most important figure in the English folk song revival, would not allow singers at his Ballads and Blues Club to perform material from outside their own language and culture. Fortunately for us all inspirational musicians like Lonnie Donegan, Fairport Convention and The Rolling Stones ignored this diktat.
I think it is important to accept that Cajun and Zydeco are of minority interest and if our clubs are to succeed they must feature other types of music. At the same time hard core Cajun fans must support Cajun bands who introduce blues, country and pop songs into their traditional repertoire. Remember - Nathan Abshire, The Hackberry Ramblers, Johnny Allan and a hundred other Cajun stars did exactly the same to keep their music alive and well.
Martyn Day/Crane River Cajuns
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