Listening to Music in All the Wrong Places . . .

Having Queen Ida at the Forum Theatre, with its orderly rows of plush, cushioned seats and no dance floor, makes about as much sense as seat belts on a trampoline.

The old wise ones tell us, among other things, that there’s a place for everything and everything in its place.

Shakespeare it’s not.

But there is a certain validity to the adage, even in our “anything goes” age. Think how much controversy and pain could have been avoided in recent years alone, if everyone only had recognized:

-- That preachers belong in churches, not TV studios.

-- That movie stars belong on the silver screen, not in exercise videos.

-- That mannequins belong in store windows, not on network news.

-- That Sparky Anderson belongs in a baseball dugout, not behind a radio microphone.

-- Most important, that raisins belong in little cardboard boxes, not in oatmeal cookies.

Likewise, every style of music has a place where it best belongs, and something bizarre is bound to happen when you put music that belongs in one environment into another.

Like putting Bob Dylan into a 70,000-seat sports stadium.

Or putting an orchestra into the Hollywood Bowl.

This theory has been supported a couple of times recently with appearances in Orange County by Cajun musician Queen Ida & Her Bon Temps Zydeco Band, and by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans.

Both Queen Ida and the Preservation Hall band play music that’s rollicking, infectious and quintessentially American. Above all, it depends on interplay with the audience.

Both bands were presented with the utmost respect, in tasteful surroundings--Queen Ida at the Forum Theater in Yorba Linda, the Preservation Hall band at the South Coast Community Church in Irvine. Both met with enthusiastic responses.

But something got lost. . . .

Zydeco--the bayou music that pumps up traditional Cajun waltzes and two-steps with the rhythmic drive of R&B; and rock--belongs in a dance hall. It’s joyous, participatory music that usually provides a spirited backdrop to Louisiana Saturday night soirees. It’s as delightfully sloppy as barbecued ribs, as deliciously jumbled as a bowl of jambalaya.

When Clifton Chenier, the late undisputed king of zydeco, used to play the Southland, he preferred the less-than-royal surroundings of the gymnasium at Verbum Dei High School in Los Angeles to a concert hall.

Actually, the high school cafeteria-like stage of the Forum Theatre would have been fine for Queen Ida, if only there had been a dance floor. But the Forum’s orderly rows of plush, cushioned seats made about as much sense as seat belts on a trampoline.

Zydeco without dancing makes as much sense as golf on TV.

Similarly, traditional New Orleans jazz is best appreciated in places like Preservation Hall--a dank, dilapidated room where people can wander in off the street for some loud conversation over a smoke or a Coke from the machine.

There may have been some cosmic irony in seeing the spirited but decidedly down-to-earth Preservation Hall band in a church, but the sit-down, unsullied setting straitjacketed the music.

UC Irvine had the right intentions in booking the Preservation Hall band, as the music unquestionably deserves to be kept alive as a reminder of the uncontrived joy that jazz once held.

But if they want to give audiences a feeling for what the music still can mean, next time they ought to hold it in the basement of the Elks Lodge in downtown Santa Ana.

In our desire to honor and advance such colorful regional folk music styles as zydeco and New Orleans jazz, we’re going overboard in trying to treat them like art forms. Which isn’t to say they’re not art forms. It’s just that, like any other, they have a proper milieu.

Opera belongs in an expensive theater. Symphonic music belongs in a concert hall. And folk music belongs where people can get involved in it.

After all, folk music without the folks is just music.