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By DOMINICK CROSS
LAFAYETTE — In this much needed pause between calamities — a waning pandemic and the possibility of WWIII — make the best of the opportunity to indulge in Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, this weekend (March 18-20, 2022) in Girard Park.
The springtime version of the festival that’s usually held in the fall marks the 48th running of the music, food, arts and crafts extravaganza celebrating the Cajun and Creole cultures. One doesn’t have to go back in history to recall that COVID-19 put a halt to life as we knew it this time of year in 2020, and the virus kept most of us off-balance through 2022.
Virtual festivals became the rule of thumb everywhere and got us by, like decaf coffee, until the real deal that’s about to go down in two days and upcoming months. So, bring on the caffeine, the great outdoors, dancing shoes and an appetite for food, fun and frolic in all of the usual ways. Almost.
“We’re celebrating finally getting back together again, live in the park,” said Barry Ancelet, president of the board of Festivals Acadiens et Creoles. “We want people to please be responsible. Let’s not get carried away, careless at this point to undo the good things that are happening.
“Hopefully, as many people as possible will be vaccinated and just be responsible in how we gather. If anybody feels sick or symptomatic of anything, really, not just COVID, but anything, you know, they’ll stay home.
“Let’s just be safe. Let’s be smart,” he said. “If you’re coughing or running a fever, stay home.”
Festivals Acadiens et Creoles will again return to its normal time in October — yep, we’re getting a two-for-one this year — sans hurricane, pandemic or another world war.
Ancelet said that the original event that became this festival was held in the spring in Blackham Coliseum. But there are no plans to return to this time of year on a regular basis.
“We’re going to have the festival in October,” Ancelet said. “This spring festival is to make up for the one we didn’t have last October. In October, we’re still dealing with hurricane season, but I think it’s become our home, become our time.”
While bad weather may be an issue, it should take place when we’re all tucked away for the night. As of Wednesday, there’s “the chance for some severe weather as the front moves through, which is expected to be in the early morning hours of Friday,” according to KATC Weather, noting that the weekend outlook is good.
Music to your ears
The festivals’ line-up includes the usual Grammy-noms and Grammy winners, standard bearers of years past, envelope pushers of the present, and new bands with familiar names.
There is a tribute to the late Courtney Granger, Saturday, March 19, 2022, 1 p.m., on Scène Ma Louisiane. Granger, who left us way too soon at 39 in September 2021 , played Cajun fiddle and Cajun sang with The Pine Leaf Boys and Balfa Toujours. He sat in with everybody and would make the hair on your neck stand up knocking off a country crooner classic. Granger released Beneath Still Waters in 2016 and if you order it now, you should have it in your collection by next week.
Over the weekend, there’s the golden opportunity to listen and dance to Sheryl Cormier & Cajun Sound, Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Wayne Singleton & Same Ol’ 2 Step, Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars, Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie, Bonsoir, Catin, Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble, Balfa Toujours, Joe Hall and the Louisiana Cane Cutters, Feufollet, Savoy Family Band, Cedrick Watson & Bijou Creole, Riley Family Band, The Potluck Band, Jesse Lege, Lil’ Nathan & the Zydeco Big Timers, Jourdan Thibodeaux et les Rodailleurs, Wayne Toups & ZydeCajun.
The Bayou Food Festival will give you a taste of the Cajun and Creole cultures, and the Louisiana Crafts Fair artists and craftspeople will have their wares to marvel over and purchase.
Looking ahead
Ancelet said the board will meet in early April to plan the fall festival, in which the week of will coincide with an ethnomusicology conference in Lafayette.
“We’ve got some interesting plans for the next one,” he said. “None of this is in stone, but what we’re discussing right now is celebrating Louisiana as an international Francophone crossroads, examining the connections Louisiana has to the rest of the French speaking world.
“Part of that is going along with the likelihood that we’re going to have a major, international Francophone Ethnomusicology Conference in Lafayette the week of the festival in October,” Ancelet said, adding, “all of this is in the planning stages, but this is what we’re shooting for.”
Look for scholars and performers from the Francophone areas “that we’re examining to see the connections,” said Ancelet. “Not only to ponder them, but hear them.”
Joshua Clegg Caffery, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and Ancelet have been is discussion with Roger Mason, musician/ethnomusicologist who worked with Claudie Marcel-Dubois, the French ethnomusicologist about the conference.
A similar ethnomusicology conference was held over Zoom last year.
Who knew?
As it happened, Mason had a major impact on Ancelet’s life during his collegiate years, and, as it so happens, anyone who has ever enjoyed Festival Acadiens et Creoles.
Mason came to Louisiana in the early 1970s “and met with and learned from and recorded with the Balfa Brothers, Nathan Abshire, the Ardoins — a lot of the founding members of that generation — so he’s very well connected and a long-time, not only fan of, but very knowledgable of Cajun music and zydeco.”
While in Nice, France, when Ancelet was on his academic year abroad in 1972-73, Mason was playing “Crowley Two-Step” in a coffee shop, “And it changed my life,” said Ancelet.
Ancelet introduced himself and said he was from Louisiana and that the song eased his homesickness.
“And he said, ‘You must know all of the people I learned from, Dewey Balfa, Nathan Abshire…,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know any of those people, but I need to know who they are.’”
Mason told Ancelet that when he gets back home, go to Basile, get directions to Dewey Balfa’s house and introduce himself. So, in the summer of 1973, he knocked on Balfa’s door.
“I said, ‘Are you Dewey Balfa?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ I said, ‘I’m Barry Ancelet and I’m from here and I was in France and I met Roger Mason,” recalled Ancelet, who said in his nervousness, his response got faster and faster before Balfa urged him to slow down and invited him inside.
“I went in and that’s how I got involved in all of this,” Ancelet said. “And it was in part due to Roger Mason.”
And nearly 50 years later, here we all are.