CAJUN MUSIC TO SPICE UP COUNTY CLUBS

When Cajun food started showing up on San Diego restaurant menus about a year ago, it was big news in culinary circles.

The arrival here of Cajun music promises to have the same effect on the pop music scene. The simple, emotional folk music of French Louisianians, both white and black, will be introduced to San Diego audiences Sunday night at two North County nightclubs.

The Louisiana Cajun Trio will perform traditional Cajun waltzes, two-steps and one-steps from the 1800s at the Old Time Cafe in Leucadia.

That same night, Queen Ida and her band will play “zydeco” music, a 20th-Century hybrid of white Cajun and black Louisiana blues, at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.

Like Cajun food, both variations of Cajun music use simple ingredients to produce a hot, spicy taste. Cajun food hits you in the stomach; Cajun music hits you in the heart.

“It’s all dance music--very simple and unornamented, but very emotional and vigorous,” said Carolyn Russell, the 53-year-old guitarist with the Louisiana Cajun Trio.

“It can make you laugh one minute and cry the next. And, like Cajun food, it’s catching on all over the world.”

It sure is. Cajun bands, wielding accordions and fiddles, have invaded folk and jazz festivals throughout the United States and Europe. National folk magazines like Sing Out! are carrying articles about Cajun music.

Even the pop music mainstream has begun embracing the time-honored Cajun sound. Doug Kershaw has built a name for himself in Nashville as “the Cajun fiddler.” And a few years ago, veteran rock ‘n’ roller Gary U.S. Bonds included an old Cajun tune, “Jole Blon,” on his much-heralded comeback album--which was produced by Bruce Springsteen.

“I think the simplicity of Cajun music has a lot to do with it,” Russell said. “Pop music has become jaded. Even the singer-songwriters who came out of the folk music era of the early 1960s have grown pretty sophisticated over the years, with seven or eight chord changes in a single song.

“But at the same time that pop music is gaining in sophistication and intellectual interest, it’s losing some of the heart, some of the basic emotion.

“Cajun music is bringing back some of that heart. The main instrument is the accordion, and the limitations of the accordion--you can only play two chords--keep the music simple.

“As a result, Cajun music is reintroducing people to emotional music, because there’s nothing to cover up the heart, the feeling.”

Both traditional white Cajun music and its black zydeco offshoot are rooted in the French folk songs brought to North America by the French Arcadians, who settled in what is now Nova Scotia in the early 1600s.

By the middle 1700s, the area had fallen under British rule, and over the next three decades the French were gradually driven out, Russell said.

Many migrated south to Louisiana, at the time a Spanish colony and one of the few territories in North America where the displaced French were allowed to practice their Catholic faith.

“They came with nothing, not even instruments,” Russell said. “All they had were memories of the basic structure of tunes, and as their culture began to grow, they were forced to rely on what was available.”

From the sympathetic German immigrants nearby came the accordion, Russell said. From the blacks on the Southern plantations came the simple dance rhythms that characterize both variations of Cajun music to this day.

As the years went by, Russell added, Cajun music began to be recognized as a distinct form of music in its own right. Complementing the accordion in the instrumental lineup of Cajun bands were the fiddle, the triangle and, later, the guitar. The music itself, however, remained simple, with a structure confined to waltzes, two-steps and one-steps.

After the Civil War, Russell said, more and more Cajuns began to interbreed with the newly freed blacks. Their mulatto offspring, known as Creoles, began to add blues, jazz and calypso elements to traditional Cajun music.

They also began experimenting with other instruments like the bass guitar, the drums and the “button” accordion, capable of producing a wider range of sounds than the basic accordion.

By the 1930s, Russell said, the more soulful Cajun music played by the black French Louisianians was given its own name: zydeco, named after a popular Cajun dance tune of the time.

According to Sing Out! magazine, the zydeco music of today differs from traditional Cajun music in that it has faster tempos, more syncopated rhythms, and even simpler melodies.

While groups like the Louisiana Cajun Trio are keeping alive the traditional Cajun sound through concert appearances all over the world, artists like Queen Ida are doing the same for zydeco.

The Louisiana Cajun Trio was formed two years ago in Los Angeles by a pair of expatriate Cajuns and Russell, a folk guitarist from North Dakota. The trio was recently featured at the Mount Baldy Folk Festival, and when they’re not on the road, they hold monthly Cajun music workshops in Culver City under the auspices of the California Dance Cooperative.

Queen Ida, a flamboyant accordionist who appears on stage in a sequined gown and feathered headdress, has recorded six albums for the GNP Crescendo label with her backup band, the Bon Temps Zydeco Band. In 1982, she won a Grammy Award for best ethnic/traditional folk album.

“Like I said earlier, both forms of music are enjoying new levels of popularity all over the world,” Russell said. “And that tells you that no matter how much music changes, people still like to dance and be happy.”