Cajun Adventure, Post-Hurricane Rita
(continued)
On the bank of the bayou, Anna and I discovered a grassy parking area for a bunch of small pontoon barges carrying what looked at first like twisted metal. It looked like a junkyard until we realized the metal was sculpture strung with Christmas lights, obviously for a parade down the bayou at night. (Joe later explained the barges float at Christmas and again at Mardi Gras.)
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| gail grenier sweet photo | gail grenier sweet photo |
Barge with Santa and reindeer sculpture, along Bayou Teche |
Barges along Bayou Teche |
After our wandering, we headed for home and another nap (my idea of “happy hour”). That night we planned to go with Joe to Whiskey River Landing for a completely different musical experience: Geno Delafose’s zydeco.
“It’s a dive, with a ceiling so low you can almost touch it,” was how Joe described Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing on the Atchafalaya Swamp. But I really wanted to see this famous dance hall, the location for the recording of one of my favorite CDs -- “Balfa Toujours Live at Whiskey River.” And I wanted Anna to experience zydeco, the black cousin to Cajun music. Cajun has French lyrics and a backwoods sound. Zydeco features American lyrics as well as French, and replaces the tinny Cajun triangle with the more raucous-sounding metal rub-board. Cajun music uses the little traditional accordion that looks like a squeezebox; zydeco usually includes a large piano accordion. Zydeco has a lot of repetition and sounds more rhythm-and- bluesy than Cajun. Later in the week at one of our volunteer assignments, a carpenter named Freeman defined the sound perfectly: “Zydeco is nothin’ but the blues with an accordion.”
Again, Joe navigated and I drove the three of us to Whiskey River Landing. As we got closer, we began driving on a levee, a disconcerting experience for this Northerner. Eventually we came upon hundreds of cars and pick-up trucks, many of them parked at crazy angles on the side of the steep levee, like they could tip over at any moment. I felt scared just looking at them. I parked on a sanely level patch of earth beside the swamp, and we went in.
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photo by anna sweet |
Vehicles parked on steep levee at Whiskey River Landing |
This was the only place all week that charged a cover fee – $6 I think. It was already loud outside the building. I was relieved immediately to recall that I had earplugs packed in the little “dance purse” I always sling over my shoulder for outings like this. Earplugs inserted, I was ready for the onslaught of sound. When I realized how crowded it was, I felt like running… but I could see that the newly-turned-21 Anna was ready for action. Finally – a place where the median age wasn’t 50. I looked at Joe and he looked at me.
“We’ll have to offer it up,” I said – a phrase from our Catholic upbringing that we both understood. For the first half-hour or so, we hunkered down in a corner where there was enough room for us to dance a step or two. Anna immediately danced with two black partners much her senior. The first was an excellent zydeco dancer. The second, Anna informed me later, kept “grinding” into her. She added that when Joe and I danced closer to her and The Grinder, he eased up a bit, knowing I was her mother.