Raisin’ Cajun : Musical Heritage Drives Accordionist Steve Riley and the Long Beach Fest

Some years back in the Louisiana Cajun bayou town of Houma, the Houma Gazette ran stories on a running battle between the town government and a fellow whose property had recently been contained by the newly revised city limits. As the city codes demanded, he was then required to install indoor plumbing, which he fought tooth and nail, standing by his trusty outhouse and hand-pump.

When the weight of the law finally compelled him to install modern facilities in his home, his unrepentant remark to the press was, “Well, they can make me put it in, but they can’t make me use it!”

The tale exemplifies the tenacity Cajuns are capable of mustering. It certainly has served them in good stead when it comes to preserving their more valuable traditions.

The French Acadians survived forced relocation from their Canadian home by the British a few centuries ago. More recently, their culture has prevailed through decades of de-emphasis in schools, which stressed English, and the encroachment of television, Kmarts and the other homogenizing forces of American life.

“It’s small, but it’s strong,” Cajun accordionist Steve Riley says of his crawfish-decimating culture.

“There’s about a half a million people who still speak French, right here in the middle of the United States, and that makes us different,” he said. “We have our own food, and there’s the music, of course. Pretty much every five miles you can find a dance hall here with music on the weekends.”

Riley, who performs this weekend at the seventh annual Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival at Rainbow Lagoon in Long Beach, is a curious champion of traditional Cajun music. He’s not quite 24 years old, and, as one might guess by his name, French wasn’t the prime language in his house.

But Riley plays the 10-button Cajun accordion with the easy authority of a player decades his senior. Unlike other younger players, such as Zachary Richard or Wayne Toups, Riley doesn’t much go in for mixing rock rhythms or showmanship into his playing.

There is, however, no shortage of youthful excitement at work when he and his band, the Mamou Playboys, apply their mainly acoustic instruments to songs that are generations older than they.

Riley spoke by phone last week from his family’s home in Mamou, a town some 40 miles northwest of Lafayette and one that is immortalized in the much-covered Cajun tune “Big Mamou.”

So, just how big is Mamou?

“It’s not really that big,” Riley said. “The main part is exactly a square mile, with subdivisions off to the side. About 5,000 people live here. The thing about Mamou is not many communities were as rich in music as Mamou was at one time. In a square mile you had so many great musicians who were around and willing to give of their time to the younger generation that was interested--which pretty much consisted of myself and a couple of other guys when I was growing up. There’s a ton of culture here: There’s Fred’s Lounge.”

Fred’s Lounge is a small, dark bar in downtown Mamou, “which covers, like, one block,” Riley noted. Unlike most small, dark bars, it is home to a long-running live Cajun music show, broadcast over the bayou on KEUN radio from 9 a.m to noon every day. Though forgoing the liquid breakfasts enjoyed by some of Fred’s customers, Riley has been frequenting the broadcasts since he was a child.

Most of the songs Riley sings are in French, but despite a distinctively Cajun accent, he doesn’t much speak the language.

“There’s a lot of Irishmen who settled in Louisiana,” he explained, “like Dennis McGee, who was one of the first recorded Cajun musicians, back there with Amedee Ardoin. I’m French on my mother’s side, and my dad’s dad was a Riley, but his mother was a Billeaudeaux. But I didn’t learn French in the home from my parents. I learned what I know from people like Dewey Balfa (the legendary Cajun fiddler who died last year) and just from singing the songs.”

Riley admits that he liked the Electric Light Orchestra when he was 7, but it wasn’t much of a match for the music he heard around the home.

Accordion builder and player Marc Savoy is a second cousin, and he and Dennis McGee would regularly play dances at Riley’s grandmother’s house. The young Riley would play triangle, on which he would sometimes accompany the players at their Fred’s Lounge broadcasts.

“I also started messing with the accordion when I was 7,” Riley continued. “I had a great-uncle on my momma’s side of the family who played accordion. We’d go to his house in New Orleans for the holidays. When I was 7 he taught me a song on accordion, a real simple song called ‘Jump Little Frog.’ Every time I’d go back to his house I’d just play that one song over and over.”

When he was 13 he bought a Hohner accordion from Savoy, but his acclaimed cousin wouldn’t teach him to play it.

“He didn’t want to show me much at all. He wanted me to learn on my own like he did, instead of force-feeding it to me. I’m glad he did it that way. I have a really good ear, and since I’d go watch him play, I learned to play a lot like he did. I still do, but I’ve also been able to incorporate a lot of other people’s styles too,” Riley said.

One of his strongest influences wasn’t an accordion player, but fiddler Balfa, whom he still usually refers to as “Mr.”

“There was only a few kids interested in this music then. And I was really fortunate, because I was the only one who was taken up by Mr. Dewey Balfa. And the way I look at it, there was no one better who could have taken me under his wing. I owe him a lot of credit for the exposure I’ve gotten and what I’ve learned. He showed me a lot, taught me a lot about music, about life.

“He taught me that we have a great culture, and that there are a lot of other cultures throughout the United States, and that I needed to learn to appreciate them too. He said, ‘Be proud of who you are. You’ll never fully understand someone else’s culture, but just realize that they’re proud of it just like you’re proud of yours, and respect that.’ It helps you to understand people, who they are and where they come from if you stop and take a look,” he said.

Unlike today, a decade ago it wasn’t cool to be Cajun, and not many of Riley’s contemporaries were into the old-time squeeze-box music he was playing.

“My friends weren’t jumping up and down for joy--they thought it was a little strange that I was into it--but I never got ridiculed for it. And I loved it and I was going to do it no matter what anyway. I think I was accepted pretty well. I even played at high school for pep rallies and shows. My mother was a schoolteacher so we’d get together during recess and play in her classroom,” he said.

At 15, Riley was touring with Balfa, one of the musicians most responsible for spreading Cajun music outside of Southwestern Louisiana.

By the time he was 19, Riley’s band was being featured weekly on the Fred’s Lounge broadcast. The group--Riley, fiddler David Greely, guitarist Kevin Barzas, drummer Kevin Dugas and bassist Peter Schwarz--is about to issue its third Rounder album, “Trace of Time.”

The album, Riley says, will show them branching out to do a Canadian reel and even a big-band waltz tune. Given the amount of Clifton Chenier music he’s been listening to lately, Riley also expects his band will be working some of zydeco’s R & B rhythms into its music soon.

The group holds down a residency at Mulate’s restaurants in Breaux Bridge and New Orleans, and tours about a third of the year, including a number of festival shows.

Riley, making his third appearance at the Southern California event, is no stranger to the Long Beach fest stage. He says he enjoys the chance to spread the music around, but does sometimes find the festival concerts disconcerting.

“Here (in Louisiana), it’s a real natural thing that everyone wants to be involved by dancing. That’s what freaks me out: At festivals (in Louisiana) the dance floor is usually in front of the stage. There (in California), it’s people sitting down watching you. That’s fine, because I know they’re getting into it, but I like to play with dancers right in front of me, because we feed off of the dances,” he said.

When he’s pumping his accordion, “I’m trying to make the listeners feel what I’m feeling, that I’m very proud of this music; it’s a big part of me and the Cajun people, and I respect it a whole lot, and I’m really honored to be able to play it outside of Louisiana and be able to educate people about who we are and about the music.

“But when we’re onstage playing, we also try to have a good time, and we usually do,” he said. “We’re really into what we’re doing, and it usually follows with the crowd being into it and having a good time, dancing and cutting up.”

* Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys appear Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the seventh annual Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival at Rainbow Lagoon, Linden Avenue at Shoreline Drive, Long Beach. Tickets: $17, general; $15 for students and senior citizens; $5 for children 10-16; free for children under 10. Information: (310) 427-3713 or (818) 794-0070.