French Louisiana Music and Its Patrons: The Popularization and Transformation of a Regional Sound

Description

French Louisiana music emerged from the bayous and prairies of Southwest Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneered by impoverished Acadian and Afro-Caribbean settlers, the sound is marked by a high-pitched fiddle playing loud and fast above the bellow of a diatonic accordion. With lyrics about disaster and heartache sung cheerfully in a French dialect, the effect is dissonant and haunting. French Louisiana music was largely ignored in mainstream music culture, except by a handful of collectors, scholars, and commercial promoters who sought to popularize it. From the first recordings in the 1920s to the transformation of the genre by the 1970s, the spread of this regional sound was driven by local, national, and international elites who saw the music’s traditions and performers in the context of larger social, political, and cultural developments, including the folk revival and the civil rights and ethnic revival movements. Patricia Peknik illuminates how the music’s history and meaning were interpreted by a variety of actors who brought the genre onto a national and global stage, revealing the many interests at work in the popularization of a regional music. Front Matter ....Pages i-x Introduction: “A Wild and Ferocious Waltz” (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 1-23 French Louisiana Music from Home and Dance Hall to Radio and Fred’s Lounge (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 25-57 From the War on French to the War in France: World War II and Cultural Identity (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 59-84 “It’s All French Music”: Patrons on the Trail (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 85-107 Brand New Old-Time Southern Americana: Harry Smith’s Anthology Brings French Louisiana Music into the Folk Canon (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 109-132 “I Want You to Be/Just like You Used to Be, Darling”: Choreographing the Newport Waltz (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 133-162 Utter Strangers: The English and French Language Movements (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 163-187 “Les metamorphoses”: Civil Rights, Ethnic Revival, and New Regional Sounds (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 189-209 Postscript (Patricia Peknik)....Pages 211-217 Back Matter ....Pages 219-223