Questioning Authority : Beausoleil’s Doucet Preserves Past, Fiddles With Present

On his way to becoming one of the leading figures in American traditional folk music, it helped that Michael Doucet knew when to absorb everything a teacher could show him, and when to reject a teacher’s pronouncements as complete nonsense.

Doucet’s confrontation with academic nonsense came when he was a freshman at Louisiana State University, enrolled in a survey class in American folk music.

Speaking by phone from his restored, 1824-vintage house outside Lafayette, La., the Cajun fiddle ace, who will lead his long-running band, Beausoleil, Friday night at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, recalled listening in annoyance as the professor ran down the syllabus.

“There was blues, mountain music, but it totally bypassed Cajun music,” said Doucet, who once said that in his Cajun upbringing, it was as natural for him to absorb his community’s traditional French-language music as it was for most American kids to soak up Christmas carols.

“I raised my hand and said, ‘What about Cajun music?’ ” Doucet continued. The professor’s answer was something to the effect that Cajun music wasn’t an authentic, original form of folk music, but merely an adaptation of English styles.

Doucet (pronounced doo-SAY) responded not with resentment, but with research into the background of the music played by the Cajuns--the descendants of the Acadians, the French settlers of Nova Scotia.

Exiled after the British conquered the region in the 1750s, the Acadians--later shortened to Cajuns--eventually drifted south to the French-controlled territory of Louisiana. Doucet burrowed into LSU’s library stacks and found a folklorist’s study from 1939 that included transcriptions of early Cajun recordings. He used it as the starting point for a term paper on the links between the songs of Cajun singer-accordionist Iry LeJeune and French music dating back to medieval times.

“My professor and I became good friends after that,” Doucet recounted. “He said, ‘Maybe you’re on to something.’ ”

Evidently. Some 25 years later, Doucet, 44, is renowned both as a traditionalist who has preserved and popularized Cajun music as it was played more than 60 years ago, and as an innovator who has taken the lively old styles in fresh directions, adding the rhythmic kick of the rock ‘n’ roll he grew up playing as a teenager.

Beausoleil (the name means “good sun” in French) is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary as a recording band. Doucet’s catalog, which extends to more than 25 Beausoleil albums, solo releases, and collaborative work with the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, starts with a 1976 Beausoleil recording released initially in France.

The band’s most recent album is the 1994 collection, “L’Echo,” which essayed both faithful and slightly revised versions of songs handed down by some of the old-line Cajun players who were Doucet’s key inspirations.

The band, which also includes Doucet’s brother, David, on guitar, accordionist Jimmy Breaux, bassist Al Tharp, percussionist Billy Ware and drummer Tommy Alesi, began touring nationally in 1986.

It has received a half-dozen Grammy nominations in the traditional folk category. In 1991 the band received a huge compliment from Mary-Chapin Carpenter: her Grammy-winning country hit, “Down at the Twist and Shout,” was written in part as a homage to Beausoleil and its ability to enliven a nightclub or dance hall with infectious Cajun two-steps and waltzes.

Keith Richards used Doucet as a session fiddler on his 1988 album, “Talk Is Cheap,” and Doucet says he played earlier this year on a Nashville session for an as-yet-unreleased album by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.

If all of this goes to show the benefits of standing up to professorial authority, it also should be noted that Doucet’s accomplishments rest equally on his willingness to seek out honored teachers and heed their lessons.

A natural musician, Doucet grew up playing banjo, trumpet and guitar, but only dabbled a bit on an uncle’s fiddle, which he could seldom get his hands on.

After finishing college, he decided to master the Cajun fiddle, and he set out to track down some of the great old-time fiddlers in Cajun country. Doucet had another important motive besides his own musical education: With little traditional Cajun music on record or set down in writing, he wanted to document and preserve what the old-timers knew before it was lost to posterity.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts gave Doucet the time and freedom to apprentice himself to such fiddle masters as Dennis McGee, Dewey Balfa and Canray Fontenot--all of whom have died over the past five years.

He subsequently got another NEA grant and began taking small groups of Cajun and zydeco musicians to schools in Southwestern Louisiana, demonstrating the music for kids and trying to reverse the effects of official policies and common prejudices that led to a suppression of the Cajun-French language and ridicule for the Cajuns’ rural culture.

“What I was trying to do in the ‘70s was reinstate the pride in this music in the people of Louisiana,” Doucet said. “Going outside of Louisiana didn’t enter my mind at all.”

That changed in the 1980s, when things Cajun became faddishly popular, thanks largely to the culinary promotions of New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme and films such as “The Big Easy” (which featured music by Beausoleil).

Traditionalist though he might be, Doucet had no problem playing Cajun music under circumstances far removed from its natural habitat of dances, parties and family gatherings.

When Beausoleil debuted in New York in 1983, it was under the auspices of Prudhomme, who wanted some authentic Cajun sounds to go with an exhibition of Cajun cookery.

Many a traditional folkie would balk at riding the wave of a popular fad; Doucet took an embracing stance, reasoning that inclusiveness was part of Cajun music’s essence to begin with.

In Cajun country, Doucet said, “This music was shared all over, any kind of instruments, any kind of place. It was the kind of thing where you welcomed anybody.”

So even though he concedes that it was “a weird thing” to hitch a traditional style of music onto the chuck wagon of a burgeoning food fad, Doucet had no problem trying to seduce the ears and feet of newcomers who might have come to a Cajun event primarily to indulge their stomachs.

The Cajun fad proved disastrous to the Louisiana redfish population, but beneficial to many a Cajun and Zydeco band. The faddish days are over, but Doucet says that the music has found a good, firm fan base.

“It’s not this exotic thing from the bayous [anymore],” he said. “It’s still strong, very well accepted. That’s the best thing--that it’s accepted on its own terms.”

While last year’s “L’Echo” album looked back to the music of some of his teachers and inspirations, Doucet also continues to find ways to innovate.

Since last spring, viewers tuning to the local TV news on ABC-affiliate KATC in Lafayette have been hearing a swirling fanfare of Cajun fiddle, accordion and a rhythm tapped out on triangle, composed and recorded by Doucet, in place of the standard alarm of synthesizer beeping and chiming typical of television news themes.

Beausoleil’s adaptability will tested at the Irvine Barclay, where the formal proscenium theater setup is far removed from Cajun music’s typical milieu of barrooms, dance halls and outdoor festivals.

“It’s more difficult for us than just a dance, but it’s good to do it” in theaters, Doucet said. “Every so often you have to sit down and listen to the music.”

“The next time, don’t listen at all,” this large, bearishly built musician said with a big, easy laugh. “Just dance.”

* Beausoleil plays Friday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $18 and $20. (714) 854-4646 (box office) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).

* Who: Beausoleil

* When: Friday , 8 p.m.

* Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The theater is on Campus near Bridge Road, across from the Marketplace mall.

* Wherewithal: $18 and $20.

* Where to call: (714) 854-4646 (box office) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).