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It was an evening of remarkable energy.
I said, instead of playing it on the back porch, we're going to start playing it on the front porch
and tell everybody what Cajun music is all about.
Filled with heartfelt emotion.
I feel kind of like my outlook and approach to life has improved because of being just hanging around with Dewey,
driving in the car, or in the school bus.
Oh, my land, my land, my land, oh, my, my land,
I know you are beautiful.
Some call him a great in Cajun music and others call him an ambassador to his culture.
And many call him a master Cajun fiddler.
As for me, I simply call him daddy.
My daddy is Dewey Balfour.
I love you, daddy.
We love you.
And incredible music.
I remember him, daddy.
Be There is some of the greatest talents in Cajun music gathered to honor one of the best loved Cajun fiddlers of all time.
Dewey Balfour.
Dewey Balfour, the tribute concert.
60 minutes of Cajun music captured in live performance.
Available now for just $24.95.
To order, call 1-800-522-1322.
Visa and MasterCard accepted.
I had an uncle who lived a field across from my house.
And I remember him playing music and playing the fiddle.
And I remember my aunt singing, you know, just these old songs and things like that.
I mean, I didn't know it was Cajun music.
We never called it that until later.
It was just French music and just old songs.
The songs are so roadworthy.
I mean, most of these songs, these melodies have been around for hundreds of years.
They have survived.
The songs have survived.
So they survived because of a reason.
When I was a senior in 69, there was a lot going on.
And I think for us, it was like that was our ways of being rebels or revolutionaries,
is to do something that wasn't cool at that time, that wasn't American at that time.
But it was like, you know, revolutionary in the way that why are you doing this?
You know, why you want to play old people music?
And that's what it was called.
But just because of that, that's why we did it.
I think that's what it was called.
When I hear music that's really is well done and has a lot of character,
a lot of soul and just a lot of wonderful vibes that I pick up from it, I just can't, I laugh.
You know, I just laugh and that's how much it moves me.
I don't have any recollection of the first time I heard it because I'm sure I probably heard the music in the womb.
You know, because my father, even though his father was a fiddler and his brother was a fiddler,
my father didn't ever learn how to play anything.
But if there was ever anyone who was a music addict, it was my father.
He would just go completely flipped out when he would hear Cajun music, preferably the Gordian.
So my father ordered me an accordion on Cézureau Buck, $27.50.
And the day it came in was this opening day of dove season.
Then my father said, you want to come dove hunting with me? I said, no, I want to play with my accordion.
My father went in the back, did his hunting, came back and he hears music coming from the front bedroom.
So my father comes into the front bedroom where I was sitting out with my little accordion
and his eyes got the size of a 50 cent piece.
When he saw it was me playing, well, from that point on our relationship just changed dramatically.
It was no longer this little son of his who couldn't do anything right.
He said, hey folks, come see my son, come listen to him play the accordion,
just to see his expression that that moment was enough to make me want to pursue this for the rest of my life.
Music
I'm a pretty simple person in some ways. I think the way I hear things might be pretty primitive.
I like primitive music and Cajun music has that primitive rhythm I hear
and the simplicity of the words, I hear that too.
I like love songs a lot. There are a lot of them in Cajun music, but you know, I have to find them.
And I like songs that have a tone to them that express broken heartedness.
Music
When I was 10 years old I had this plastic TV pal, Veritone Ukulele,
and my father was really into Dixieland jazz, so he wanted us to be musicians,
so he brought this guitar, it must have cost him $2. Here girls learn how to play this.
And like, I play that thing so fast, I picked it up and I could re-tune it into open tunings,
bar chords, finger picking, everything on this little plastic TV pal, Veritone Ukulele.
Music
And I love music.
Music
When I first got my fiddle, you said you've got to bring it to Lionel's,
so I brought it to Lionel's, of course this is a whole day thing,
but I was talking about this young guy in Eunice who was doing accordions,
this was like the early 70s, so Marc was a young guy, we were young too, Marc was a young guy,
and so you had to meet this guy, because when somebody says he's a young person,
wow, let's go do it, so to go to Marc's store it's like it's great,
because you go in there and immediately he speaks to you in French,
which was sort of unusual with young people in those days, to have in a store to start with French,
so once you got beyond the French thing, that he could understand,
well okay, you are right, you're from here, you're not from somewhere else,
then it became fine, became really good friends after that.
I remember very well the first day that Mike Doucet walked into Sauvres Music Center,
I remember him very well, that this young kid would want to pursue Cajun music,
because he didn't look the type, he seemed well educated,
and he didn't look like the normal person who would be pursuing Cajun music,
he was cool, he was with it, so it stayed on my mind.
Dennis McGee and I were great friends, he was like a grandfather figure to me,
I spent a lot of time with him, I loved him, I did a lot of taping,
a lot of learning and a lot of coffee drinking,
and when I first met Dennis and started going to his house and learning his music,
I had to relearn Cajun music.
What I was missing was that stuff that hit my heart really deep,
was that old French stuff, so that's what I understood through Dennis' music.
One of the people that I really copied a lot of his style was, his name was Theo Val,
they called him Baudet, another man that lived in the neighborhood was Iram Courville,
Aladanty Baudot, those were accordion players, but they were not musicians,
they were farmers, laborers, who like I said earlier played accordion,
but they were almost like insulted if you called them musicians,
and they had fingers about this big, but put an accordion in their hand,
and you hear this most fantastic style and beautiful music.
I don't want to be like anybody else, I mean Dennis was his person,
and there's no way to ever be like this.
The thing that he gave to me, the things that I saw from him,
was a manner of doing things, and a manner of getting a certain response,
and a manner of playing, and I think that's what the thing he taught me,
is not to be a carbon copy or anything like that,
but to be your own self and incorporate this kind of music,
this kind of style in your music.
I just think, said well if ever I can learn how to play this stuff,
when I've watched these old men perform, and this charismatic personality of theirs,
and how it was just so real, and it was nothing pretentious about it.
He said whenever I get old, if I can learn how to play like this,
and if I can go play some house dances in somebody's kitchen,
I want to emulate these old guys, I want to try to be like them.
When people ask me what kind of music you play, I said the kind of music I play is,
in case of a power failure, I continue playing.
I don't want to be dependent on all this stuff,
I just want to pick up my instrument and play.
I thought Wolf Trap was the ultimate experience in music.
We would go up there every year, and that was my education.
And then it wasn't until, I think Coto played the National Folk Festival
in Wolf Trap, Virginia, 1976, and Coto and Beausoleil were playing.
At that time Beausoleil would come out with an acoustic set,
and Coto would follow us and do the electric set.
It was real funny because we were all into this real strict traditional thing,
and I just couldn't decide if I was going to go listen to the progressive Cajun group,
and everybody kept saying, you've got to see this young guy in the fiddle, he's just a genius.
So we're here talking to the board of Joe Wilson or somebody,
or Andy Wallace who was actually running this festival, it was the last festival.
We talked to him, and all of a sudden we hear this voice,
oh, you know, the Cajun you see, so here comes Mark Savoy,
say, Mark, what are you doing here?
So we started talking, and we had a good time, so Mark, we have to play.
Oh yes, let's go play now.
So I mean, he was right in the middle, like about 10 o'clock in the morning.
So he says, come on, bring your fiddle, you know.
So the festival has all these things you've got to do.
We didn't know where we were, you know.
So we just followed Mark, figured he knew what to do.
And so we just, he just found the place right in the middle of some path,
and he said, come on, let's play.
So we played.
And I think it was at that time that this young girl by the name of Anne Allen
wandered up and heard this music where it wasn't supposed to be, right,
because this time you'd have to play in your little designated spot,
well, not us, and we'd have to play right in the middle of stuff.
I was walking around, and they were having a jam session under the trees,
and I thought, with Sterling, Sterling Richard and Mike and Mark,
and I wonder if Dewey was doing, Dewey might have been playing too.
I think they were all jamming.
And so my Cajun friend said, Anne, I want you to meet Mark Savoy.
And the minute we met each other, we hit it off.
So I went to a folk festival once,
and I met Anne, and she didn't have any kind of airs about herself.
She was very natural, and she was into music,
and she seemed to be interested in Cajun music, and that was unusual, you know,
for a girl of her age and her background to be interested in Cajun music.
I was impressed by that, you know.
And I think that's where Anne and Mark just fit so nicely,
because they both love the old songs,
but what they're doing exactly is creating something new and fresh again
in how they approach it.
Mark, when I met him, was totally crazy.
When I first came down here, we went to all the radio shows,
where the Balfour Brothers had a radio show at Mooshers Lounge,
and he would just go up there and tear up songs on the accordion with anybody,
and just, you know, he was just wild.
I was impressed by what she liked about music
and why she didn't care about it,
and just took to each other like a duck takes to water.
When I first came, I didn't know what to listen to,
and he just handed me two Arby Lejeune records
and said, take these home with you this time,
and this is what Cajun music is, which is really raw stuff,
and I just thought, wow, that's so cool.
A lot of people accuse me or just question,
why are you playing with Michael Doucet, you know?
Why do you do this?
You know, he's so fiddling, he gets just so wild with it.
At first, Mark could not connect to Mike's fiddle playing at all.
I mean, as far as he was concerned, that was outer space, you know?
But he knew he was a brilliant fiddler,
but he couldn't figure out sort of what was going on.
So you know what happened with us was more, it was friendship first,
and it was that we really had so much fun together.
That was the number one thing.
He was taking these things that he was drawing from
and taking a Cajun song and bringing it up into the stratosphere.
But because he had also studied with Dennis and Dewey and Kenra
and all these people, he could bring it down to level one.
Come on, Doucet!
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What is so beautiful about the English language?
I think French is a much nicer language than English.
What is so great about the American way of life?
I think the life that I lived, the lifestyle that I lived and my father lived
and my grandpa lived is much more beautiful.
What's so great about modern day America that they would tear down
this beautiful old Acadian house and replace this with a trailer or brick shoebox?
What's so great about American food that they would want to give up
all the wonderful Cajun recipes and replace that with hamburgers and hot dogs?
I just don't understand that.
And I don't want to understand that.
I don't want to understand that at all.
I guess Mark and I do relate as the younger generation,
even though Mark is really more of the traditional thing,
but a transitional age, because a lot of people his age,
I think they either became Americans, you know, or Americana,
or they accepted, you know, or continued French,
but very few were on that border like Mark that could understand the American sensibility,
graduate, has a college education and still came back to being what he was.
I think that's very, very unique and that's exactly what our culture needed.
I think we draw from the past because the past speaks to us in every part of our life.
The way we eat, you know, the way we dress, the way we see things,
just our whole vision is that way and the music goes with it.
Oh, promise me to be notified until death,
Châtilly, Télassane, mon coeur visé.
Chère Petite.
Well, Anne is a unique individual.
She sees everything through an artist's sort of point of view.
And I think her first impression here was, you know, how romantic it could be.
I think coming down with Mark, sometimes you learn the reality, sometimes it's not that romantic.
I mean, it's romantic in a way if you can understand the grizzle around things.
And I think that just attitude, she dug it from the beginning, from the get-go.
I think she understood how unique this place was.
And it must have been, and sometimes I'm sure it still is, it's very hard because it's, you know,
to not have grown up here, to just, you know, to have grown up with these things,
you kind of take them for granted or just understand them, but they don't really shock you.
But for shock value, I think Louisiana can do you a number.
There's one thing that has bothered me about this area, and that is the insects in the summer
and the heat of the summertime and the amazing amount of insects that are everywhere,
and the way everything mildews and, you know, bugs are in your closet, mice eating my clothes,
my vintage clothes collection's been destroyed by the humidity and the bugs and stuff.
That's my really biggest hate thing is the heat of the summer.
But I'm just a little Anglo girl, so it's...
The whole thing was, you know, a woman in a Cajun band, you know.
That's not the way it is. I mean, there was a lot of tips with that a long time in the 70s and the 80s, you know.
And when Anne has come way beyond that,
and the fact that, I mean, I don't think she even sees herself as a woman in that role.
I mean, she's just this vehicle again, you know, playing and singing these songs.
And again, the fact that someone she really relates to is Clément Breaux,
who was not maybe the first woman, but the first woman to record Cajun music
and being very popular with her husband, Joe Falcao.
In fact, when I'm playing, I think of Clément all the time when I get tired.
I just think of her. I think, she did this every night with no air conditioning, no microphones,
nothing to, you know, keep her going. And if she could do it, I can do it.
It's a hard job at times, a fun job at a hard job.
In rhythm guitar, you have to be strong, because, you know, it's a very driving thing.
To me, I mean, I just assume, here's somebody playing two notes in Cajun music rhythmically, powerfully,
correct, then a million notes and have the wrong rhythm.
I mean, the fancy part of it is by far the least interesting of any of it.
To me, in my opinion, the rhythm is the magic of it and it's real elusive.
Oh, yeah, do it further, do it, baby.
We had this friend, Gary Moro, he's this real, was a superb rhythm guitar player,
and he played just the way Mark liked the rhythm to be played.
So we got Gary over and we sat in the kitchen and he said, now, do it, play like Gary,
I want you to play just like this to back me up.
And he says, great, I had to relearn my whole vision of music.
The whole thing is nothing about how technically fancy you can play.
You're not supposed to do that at all, you know.
It's really just that perfect rhythm thing and it's got to sustain a certain amount of time.
And you've got to relax. If you're not relaxed, you can't do it right.
Oh, the band.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thanks so much for having us.
The Savoy Doucet Cajun Band.
Everybody wanted to know what the songs were about because they liked the way it sounded.
I was just going to put out a little book of the words of the songs.
The minute I started talking to people that were doing these songs,
I just said, that's what I want to do.
I mean, I just want to hear everything they have to say.
And then when I saw the pictures, I'm an image person anyway.
When I see images that get me, I would have done anything to put those images in a book.
Yeah, but I think when people, you know, like the way we hear this, as people today,
most people are looking for this kind of soulful element.
They long to hear this sort of wild, primitive, soulful thing.
And the early recordings had that and the later ones didn't.
The later ones were real snappy peppy, go lucky young boys in their white pants.
I think Cajun music had to evolve, otherwise it would have been dead
if they would have all just sounded like Dennis McGee or early Leo Swallow.
Oh yeah.
People in the 30s wouldn't have paid him any attention.
That couldn't have been.
It would have been nothing but Bob Wills in here, you know,
because that kind of thing just dies unless it evolves.
And I think we're lucky to have some people who incorporated some of the elements
like Iro Lejeune, you know.
But I think Leo Swallow retained his essences in his later records.
They were obviously recording for Eli Oberstein, who had his pocket full of money
and a car full of whiskey, as they always told me.
They had a good time, you know.
By tinkering with my little accordion, I had learned some fundamental principles
about accordion repair, very fundamental and very few fundamental principles.
But even though, because of the fact that all these old guys around here
were not repairing themselves, the word quickly spread around the neighborhood,
you know, that I could do some things like that.
So before long, you know, eventually, I had a little accordion business going on.
My father's out in the kitchen.
And in the early 60s, while I was playing dances,
these dances that I was getting fed up with and bored with,
my father told me, he said, why don't you go build your little shop somewhere?
He said, like on the land on the highway over there,
and apparently that's what you want to do, you know, make accordions.
So this stayed on my mind until I got so disgusted with playing music
that I said, I think I'm going to take my father's advice.
And so when he told me he'd lend me some money,
I started dreaming up of this building that I wanted to build
that would manufacture accordions,
and that would sell musical instruments.
And I knew that the Cajuns liked Cajun music loud,
so sell, you know, public address systems
so that they could play big jobs and make themselves heard,
and make a center where these people could come together,
and it would be called a Cajun center.
Mark Stoehrer was it. You'd go there.
I mean, I'm sure every musician in one time has been in his store.
You know, it's before the jams or any of that stuff.
He just had to do that. Just check it out.
Everybody was curious, who is this young guy making accordions?
Does he make them as good as the monarchs, the sterlings?
So you go there and check it out.
I told you it was the 26th.
If he doesn't call me the day before, it's over.
I told you it was the 26th. It's all your fault.
You're a good musician.
Why did you call me the 26th?
Rick Gaplin.
What's happening in the big city of D.C.?
He's so gifted, and he says, you know,
this is what we need to represent our culture.
You know, we won't grow if we don't have the instruments to play on.
So then he was totally devoted to making this super accordion,
which he continues to do,
in which he's showed over 35 makers how to do them.
He's given them their secrets.
Any secrets there are, you know, he gives it to them freely.
Well, for one thing, I'm the leader of both of them.
So you have a lot of things, you know, it's like you.
I'll look at things a little different that way.
With both of them, it's I mean, we have that same identity.
We always wanted to do is show the different types of music that are here,
you know, and to have a good time and to, you know, just to stretch out.
And everybody's such a good musician to have everybody have their own little thing.
And it's more of a dance band kind of thing.
It's fun. It's just another thing like that.
I mean, you know, both slaves evolved so many ways,
both through playing with Coto and playing in France for so many years.
And they're coming back here and the playing, you know,
being probably the only Cajun group in Lafayette for so many years
before there were any restaurants or any guys kind of stuff.
And just playing just for the fun of it.
So, you know, that's the real stuff.
I mean, you know, that's that goes back a long way.
And then when you when you jump over the sape or do say it's got it's just a simplistic thing.
It's it's a respite for me because I'm not the leader anymore.
We've got two strong leaders.
I can just I can just be the fiddle player, which is great because then,
you know, I don't have to worry about saying anything or, you know,
I just can can be a part of the thing and have a good time.
If we live closer to each other, we our lives weren't so complicated.
We'd probably play all the time and every week and every night.
We'd probably play all the time and every week and just just because we love it,
just together, just for that.
And you can't beat that.
You know, I think it just shows in the music.
Oh,
thank you.
Thank you.
They both have the technical skill to go anywhere they want on their instruments.
That's what playing technically good is, is ideas.
So Mike obviously has some just unbelievable ideas he's playing through on his fiddle.
And Mark does the same thing.
I think he can carry the accordion where I've never heard anybody do it.
Even though it might be in a more traditional vein than Mike,
it's still he's going places with his instrument technically and he could just do it.
He can do it.
When Mark and I play together, we've been playing together so long that we've done
so many nice dances and old dances and long dances that there's a communication.
Like after the first day, after we get together for a while, that's just so tight.
And it's the kind of thing that a fiddle player and his accordion player or the
accordion player and his fiddle player have to have.
Is there some kind of intuition that you just know what the other person is going to be?
Because when we're playing, we play different people's style.
We might play Dennis' style or Angelos' style or Amadei's style or Ares' style,
whatever.
And you can go through all this history with somebody who knows the same thing that
you know more and a different stuff.
And you can create what these people have given us.
If you witness that, it can either sound like two things.
It can sound like just like Cajun music or Chanky Chank.
Or if you know something about it, you can hear all this stuff and you just go,
wow, what was that?
Because we can never do it again.
We can never do it the same way again.
Because it's so beautiful, you just do it for the moment.
What do it now?
Well, it's fun sometimes to take off, you know, but I'm not going to do this.
I don't want my reputation to be based upon those little excursions into the left field.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't want my reputation to be based upon that.
I don't want my reputation to be based upon the fact that we do play old-timey,
traditional music without all the glitz and the glamour
and the structured feeling of modern music.
Let's go.
Quit messing around.
Do it, Michael.
Come on, come on.
Hey, Al.
Come on, Al.
I personally think the things that make Cajun music popular
are the things that keep it separate or keep it different
or keep it apart from mainstream American music.
If you take this music and have the same attitude that the people on Nashville television
or these rock concerts, if you have that same attitude
and try to present it in the same way,
well then you're destroying the one thing that's almost like cutting Samson's hair.
You're destroying the one thing that makes this thing appealing to the rest of the world.
Well, my hero, my musical hero, was Amadé Ardouin.
If you want to hear a portrait in its true Cajun form,
listen to what Amadé Ardouin has to say.
That's portrait.
As far as the style of singing, I hear this stuff, I just get goosebumps.
To me, he encompasses and captures everything.
He's the epitome of Cajun music.
A couple of years ago, I composed a song which I intended to be a tribute to Amadé Ardouin.
And I entitled the song that I composed, Amadé Two Step, in honor of him, as a tribute to him.
It's almost like a spiritual thing, it's almost like a spiritual communication between the three of us.
There's this thing that's happening that we are part of, but yet we're not in control of it.
I'll hear Amadé do some things that he's never done before.
I'll do some things, what was that?
And it's far out, and it's a lot of fun.
You know when it happens, it doesn't happen all the time.
It's own, you mean when it just clicks so perfectly that you can't even believe it, and it's not even you playing anymore.
As Mark says, it's out of your control.
It's not at all like verbal communication or any other kind of communication.
It goes right into you through osmosis.
It's a different experience, music.
And I think that the way, when you're playing it, music has a life of its own.
And so if you can just lock into this certain place, and the music takes over.
You know, you hear when it locks.
And sometimes it almost locks, and it's really great.
Like usually you can come across like it's really good.
But when it locks, it's really magical.
When you're only three people, then no matter if you're three people here in Louisiana,
three people playing together in England or Norway or in Boston or, excuse me, California,
it's still the same three people.
So in other words, if you're playing in front of people who are unfamiliar to you,
then you can look on my left side and see these two faces who I've known for so long,
then you can be back in their kitchen.
And I think that's what's so good is that you can fall right into that place where you feel secure.
You know, you say, you know, we're doing the right thing.
We're doing good.
We feel good about it.
And this is what we do.
And we're just happy to play.
Oh, yeah.
Like it.
Yeah.
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