Hearing BeauSoleil in the Quad made me remember searching for armadillos in the backyard of Le Jardin Inn, listening to the proprietor warn my family and I about the nest of baby water moccasins he found “right by heah.” *Gulp*They made me remember powdered-sugar lace on beignets at the Cafe du Monde, New Orleans, Cajun music and dancing at Mulate's, watching old couples dance Acadian waltzes and especially eating po' boys and muffaletta at a roadside greasy spoon on stilts in the bayou surrounded by shrimp boats and Spanish moss. Also, the woman who made us pancakes on the anniversary of her husband's death in a house filled with taxidermy. She showed us a picture of him; a barrel-chested man holding a snapping turtle the size of a toboggan, conjuring the hurricanes for my family and I with a hush. A thirty-foot alligator (no lie) that he had penned, breathing not far away from us. The
All pre-Katrina, of course.
Who’s BeauSoleil? These guys are the real deal, preservers and reinventors of the Cajun tradition, and they are really fun to watch, putting on a free, rollicking show in the Quad last Wednesday night. They cook up a genre-hopping blend of zydeco, blues, Latin, country and jazz. Don’t think you like Cajun music? There’s a good chance you really do. They’re fronted by renowned innovator Michael Doucet, and backed by a washboard player/percussionist, a bassist and an accordionist with a shiny red accordion.
“It’s like Louisiana in August” Doucet quips, as the crowds begin to gather in the muggy Quad and the evening begins its slow roll as dragonflies drift with easy two-steps and waltzes as smooth as can be. Then Doucet punches up the music, reminding us in the audience that BeauSoleil is foremost “a dance band.”
As the sun sets, the music quickens and Doucet’s vocals and fiddling rock along to the infectious beat. One of the best things about the Summer Fest concerts (besides the freeness and a break from summer school papers!) is watching the multiage crowd get up and dance. The peoplewatching is prime: there’s the twirl of neohippies in patchwork skirts, punks with Mohawks nodding along to “Cajunization Blues,” a old man rocking his all-purpose jig, a woman with a pixie cut in a bubble skirt cutting a rug with a quick-stepping young guy and best of all, the strange sight of a pale blonde woman in a tie-dyed tank top dancing with her pet rat.
