#cajuns

[evilhorse]

No sense in losin’ de best one.

(Uncanny X-Men Volume 6 #4)

[doctorslippery]

[twistingtreeancestry]

Acadian Day (LA)

While this day is to celebrate the resilience, contribution, and culture of Acadians, it's also Native American Heritage Day, so I'd also like to celebrate and thank the Wabanaki Confederacy, specifically the Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, and Wolastoqey Nations.

Without the Mi'kmaq Nation accepting the French colonizers onto their land and extending a hand of peace and teaching, the French would not have easily survived, if at all.

Thanks to the bravery and resistance of the Penobscot and Wolastoqey Nations, some of the Acadians were able to evade capture, deportation, and death. If not for them, there would have been nothing for the returning Acadians to come home to.

Thanks to all of them, the Acadians were able to settle deep roots that would resound through time.

Wela'lin, Mi'kmaq Nation.

Woliwoni, Penobscot Nation.

Woliwon, Wolastoqey Nation.

We owe more than we could ever repay to you.

⋘ ⋙

In honor of my ancestors who came to Nova Scotia from France and those who left Nova Scotia to France or Louisiana.

|| Paternal Grandfather's Father's Line

Charles Olivier Miquel Guillot (1746 Nova Scotia, CA - 1845 Louisiana, USA) and his wife Madeline Josephe [Boudreaux/Boudrot] Guillot (1744 Nova Scotia, CA - N/A).

Charles' father, Jean Baptiste Guillot (1720 Nova Scotia, CA - 1759 Atlantic Ocean).

Jean's mother, Marguerite [Doiron] Guillot (1669 Nova Scotia, CA - 1759 Nova Scotia, CA).

Marguerite's parents, Jean Doiron (1677 Nova Scotia, CA - 1735 Nova Scotia, CA) and Marie Anne [Trahan] Doiron (1671 Nova Scotia, CA - 1710 Nova Scotia, CA).

Mary Anne's parents, Guillaume Trahan (1611 France - 1682 Nova Scotia, CA) and Madeleine [Brun] Trahan (1645 France - 1700 Nova Scotia, CA).

Madeleine's parents, Vincent Brun (1611 France - 1693 Nova Scotia, CA) and Marie Renee [Breau] Brun (1616 France - 1686 Nova Scotia, CA).

|| Paternal Grandmother's Mother's Line

Silvain Sonnier, Sr. (1736 Nova Scotia, CA - 1801 Louisiana, USA) and his wife Marie Magdeleine [Bourg] Sonnier (1744 Nova Scotia, CA - 1814 Louisiana, USA).

Jean Baptiste Granger (c1741 Nova Scotia - 1842 Louisiana, USA) and his wife Susanne [Cormier] Granger (c1763 Nova Scotia, CA - 1800 Louisiana, USA).

Alexandre Aucoin (1725 Nova Scotia, CA - 1780 France) and his wife Isabelle [Duhon] Aucoin (c1750 Nova Scotia - 1817 Louisiana, USA).

[anakinsafterlife]

Music and Arts for Interview with the Vampire and other French-Enjoyers

I am so genuinely excited to find out that Zachary Richard, the Francophone folk singer from Louisiana, has released a novel! The story addresses the concerns of the American Francophonie with the story of a family wracked by politics and violence in the wakr of the American Civil War.

Friends, this the is the first American novel to be published in French since 1894! Although there is still a Francophone community in Louisiana to this day, they have been dealing with forced Anglicization for well over a hundred years, including the forced Anglophone education of Francophone children.

Zachary Richard remains an outlier in an largely English American cultural landscape. He wrote and recorded the majority of his songs in French and is popular in the international Francophone musical community.

I have been meaning to talk about Richard for a very long time, particular in the context of Interview with the Vampire. There are a good many cultural references in Interview, but unfortunately it seems that the show-runners are not really too informed about historical French arts because there aren't many references to French music or playwriting. Lestat would be more likely to act Moliere than Shakespeare. Louis would be somewhere in between, probably listening to and speaking both French and English songs. Unfortunately, I'm not too familiar with Black Creole musicians, of which there were/are indeed plenty in Louisiana. I've been meaning to educate myself in that area and post a selection along with my favourite tracks from Richard, but life has been very pressing indeed these last few years, so that never happened.

Here, then, are a few of my favourite songs from Zachary Richard and a few brief recordings from Black Zydeco artists, as well as the blurb from Richard's novel.

I didn't include translations, because that would make this long post long indeed, but Richard's lyrics are readily available in any search engine.

The novel:

Rafales du carême(Les) par RICHARD, ZACHARY

Dans le désarroi qui s'abat sur le sud de la Louisiane à la suite de la guerre de Sécession, André Boudreaux, dix-sept ans, découvre la vie

Summary:

In the disarray that fell on southern Louisiana following the Civil War, André Boudreaux, seventeen years old, discovered life with his grandfather Drozin. This southern veteran, who became a rich man thanks to the arrival of the railway, tries to regain his prestige and his political power. But the sordid murder of André's uncle, the turbulent elections of 1882 and the political aims of his daughter-in-law will turn his world upside down. Les Rafales du carême is the first French-language novel published by a Louisiana author since 1894.

The music:

Dans les grands chemins. (On the big roads). A song about personal history and being drawn away from your place of origin to explore the wider world.

Au bord de Lac Bijou (On the shore of Lac Bijou). One of his bigger songs and very basic of me, but it's beautiful.

Le Ballade de Jean Batailleur. Again, one of his big ones, but it's a ballad about an orphan who grows up to be a criminal and dies alone. Depressing but gorgeous.

And this one gives me chills every time. It's a live rendition of Richard's song "La Promesse Cassee," performed with Celine Dion. This is hands down Dion's best performance ever, imho. Her voice is so nuanced and her expression so powerful, without ever once over-singing. The song's content probably has a lot to do with that. Richard wrote it in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans was so utterly devastated, and the US federal government promised aid, which, after days of waiting, never came. "The Broken Promise" is a scathing and haunting commentary on that betrayal.

"Laisse le vent souffler" (Let the wind blow) addresses the same issue, but years later. The singer tells the story of the police arriving to evacuate the community as another hurricaine approaches. He refuses to leave because he has already survived other storms and he has seen how the police have failed to support a scattered community in the past.

Can't believe I almost forgot this one:

Reveille--A powerful song addresses the expulsion of the Acadians, the forced removal (by British/English Canadian forces) of the Acadian French from the Canadian east coast and northern USA east coast. Many of the Acadians were shipped further south or "back" to Europe, where most had never been. Plagued by attendant atrocities of starvation, drowning and disease, thousands of Acadians were killed. Those who survived the journey down the American coast eventually became known by the shortened name of "Cajuns."

There are also a few extra things here from Richard's YouTube, where he highlights other Louisiana French singers and musicians. I've only included a couple, but people writing for Interview might want to explore his page more, since there's some Black Zydeco (Louisiana folk and French) musicians there.

J'ai une chanson dans mon coeur:

I couldn't find anything out about this. A young, Black American girl sings this song in an American school. I think, and hope, that she's another member of the French Louisianian musical community. Very sweet.

Zachary Richard talking about his influences and earlier Zydeco music in Louisiana.

[dearyallfrommatt]

“Opelousas Sostan“

Depending on how you feel, Mamou is a rock-influenced Cajun band or a Cajun-influenced rock band. Or it’s a bunch of Cajuns playing rock music and that’s how it comes out. In any event, they’re a pretty good band. Sort of like a bit rowdier Beausoleil, so if you like that sort of thing you’ll like this sort of thing.

This is a cover of a 1970 song by a group called Rufus Jagneaux, and yes, that’s supposed to remind you of Mick Jagger. The frontman, bassist Benny Graeff, was nicknamed “Rufus” at one point and some clever producer went from there. It hit 80 on the Billboard Top 100, the first Cajun song to make the pop charts.

[kemetic-dreams]

Why is New Orleans Creole and not Cajun?

“Cajun" specifically refers to the Acadians: the French settlers in Nova Scotia, some of whom had lived there for three generations or more, before the British expelled them between 1755 and 1764. Some were sent to other British colonies, and some were sent back to France. But when Spain took over Louisiana in 1763 and was offering free land to any colonists who would work the land and pay their taxes, many Acadians took the opportunity. They mostly settled west of New Orleans, on the prairies and in the wetlands.

The Cajuns were culturally and socially distinct from the French who had settled in New Orleans beginning in 1718: the Creoles (a word that originally applied to anyone of European descent who had been born in the New World, but that can encompass people with African and Native ancestry as well). New Orleans Creoles included wealthy plantation owners, traders, and businessmen; the Cajuns were mostly subsistence farmers. New Orleans Creoles generally spoke standard French until after the Civil War; many sent their children to be educated in France, if they could afford it. The Cajuns maintained their old French dialect, which is mostly intelligible to modern French speakers but sounds “rustic” to them.

Both groups have since intermarried with other groups that have immigrated to Louisiana: the Spanish, Germans, Irish, Americans, and others. And people move around; there are certainly Cajuns who live in New Orleans today. But New Orleans isn't Cajun, at its base, because it wasn't founded by the Acadians. The Acadians--"Cajuns” —mostly settled well to the west of it, in a region that's called Acadiana today.

[sesesimmi]

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[noelcollection]

On this day in 1755, the Expulsion of the Acadians (Fr: Le Grand Dérangement) began. The nine-year-long British deportation of French settlers from Acadia served as the historical backdrop for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie.

As portrayed in the poem, British forces forcibly removed Acadians from what are now the Canadian Maritime Provinces and the state of Maine because they questioned the French settlers’ loyalty to the British Crown during the French and Indian War. The Acadians were deported to various American colonies and even sent as far away as Great Britain and France. In the 1780s, French politician Henri Peyroux de la Coudrenière spearheaded a project to resettle the exiles in Louisiana, and the Louisiana Acadians became known as the “Cajuns.”

The featured photogravure illustrations of Evangeline were drawn by Sir Frank Dicksee.

Images from: Porter, Noah. Evangeline: The Place, the Story and the Poem. New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin, 1882.

Call number: PS2263 .P6 1882

Catalog record: https://bit.ly/3jHiqEL