BeauSoleil’s Fiddler Serves Cajun Culture Year-Round

What March is to Celtic musicians--a time of hot demand because of St. Patrick’s Day--February is to Louisiana players, thanks to Mardi Gras.

But just as the Celts have to put up with their cultural day being reduced to green beer and shamrocks, Louisianans are faced with crowds who see their Fat Tuesday prelude to Lent as just another excuse for excessive revelry.

As one of the leading forces in the preservation and growth of Cajun music from the French-rooted culture of Southwest Louisiana, Michael Doucet is steeped in that mixed blessing.

“[The Mardi Gras party] is what Americans view Cajuns or people from New Orleans as,” said Doucet, fiddler-singer of veteran band BeauSoleil, from his home in Lafayette.

“We know that Mardi Gras is just one day. But the whole idea of letting it all play out on that day before Lent gets lost. The rest of America thinks, ‘It’s February, so it’s party time.’ ”

Still, it does mean gigs for BeauSoleil and others from the region, including a Southern California swing by the band at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre on Friday, Santa Ana’s Galaxy Concert Concert Theatre on Sunday and UCLA’s Royce Hall on Tuesday--Mardi Gras itself. The bill also features zydeco artist Geno Delafose.

“You can’t be 20 places the same day,” said Doucet, 47. “So you get to spread it out and spread the cheer.”

In the process, Doucet tries to evoke rural Mardi Gras traditions that are distinctly earthier than the more famous New Orleans blow-outs.

“I usually take the opportunity to say, ‘You can go out and have a good time, but tomorrow is another day, and even in Pagan times you fasted for 40 days,” he said. “So whatever you do, it’s a time for meditation after that. There’s a reason for this.

“That’s what [Mardi Gras] means to us. It’s a great time of year. It feels right.”

Truth is, Doucet mixes cultural messages with the music whatever time of year he plays. He has since he first took up the fiddle at age 18 and “discovered” the music of his people, the descendants of the French Acadians (a name later corrupted to Cajuns) who moved to Louisiana after being kicked out of Nova Scotia in 1755.

At the time, Cajun music--two-steps and waltzes played on accordions and fiddles with words telling of work and romance, of good times and broken hearts--was vanishing, largely the stuff of the old folks. The teenage Doucet was more interested in rock ‘n’ roll.

Yet something in the seemingly anachronistic music resonated in Doucet, and soon he was seeking out those old-timers, especially fiddlers Dennis McGee, who became his mentor, and Dewey Balfa. Doucet absorbed all he could of the traditions. Along the way, he realized that traditions and rock ‘n’ roll didn’t have to be at odds. After all, the last generation of Cajun music leaders--such figures as Nathan Abshire and Iry LeJeune, who played the dance halls during the post-World War II oil boom--had incorporated Texas swing and Hank Williams country into their music.

In the mid-1970s, Doucet formed Coteau, the original Cajun-rock group. (The band reunited in 1997, 20 years after breaking up but dissolved again after guitarist Tommy Comeaux was killed by a car while riding his bike.)

From the ashes of original Coteau, Doucet put together BeauSoleil (which includes his guitarist-brother David) and continued to bring the traditions, sometimes kicking and screaming, up to date.

BeauSoleil has become by far the best-known Cajun group in the world, earning a 1997 traditional folk album Grammy for its last release, “L’Amour ou la Folie,” and nominations for six previous albums.

To Doucet updating tradition is as much a matter of looking forward as backward. The new BeauSoleil album, “Cajunization,” to be released on Rhino Records in March, connects some dots between Cajun music and Cuban rhythms (the track “Cubano Bayou”), as well as jazz and blues “Les Blues de Chaleur”) and even surf music (“Atchafalya Pipeline”).

“On this album we go in some new directions and some old directions,” Doucet said. Except for two Dennis McGee tunes, it is all original compositions.

“Everything’s related on this album; everything’s got a reason for being there, even the Cuban stuff. I found this one song that goes back to 1913 from New Orleans, when Creole musicians traded back and forth. The song, ‘Mama Inez,’ became part of Acadian traditions. A woman named Evonne Le Bland recorded it with Nathan Abshire in 1956.

“You find a lot of different rhythms--we call them Creole rhythms, but who knows what they originally were. . . . Someone heard a bit of something and a bit of something else, and put it together.”

And the surf music?

“I wrote that song years ago, and it never worked,” Doucet said. But, he figured, if there was one person who could shoot the common curl between the two styles, it had to be guitarist Jerry McGee, son of Dennis and, since 1970, a member of the surf-instrumental group the Ventures.

“I thought, ‘How fun to get Jerry finally.’ Since we do two tunes by Dennis on the album, what better than having Jerry McGee play on it too?”

In effect, it’s not a matter of adding surf to Cajun, Doucet explained, but turning surf into Cajun.

Hence the album title, Doucet said. “Our music culture is strong enough now and known enough to say that we can Cajunize anything.”

BE THERE

BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet, Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie, Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Sunday. $18.50-$20.50. (714) 957-0600. Also Tuesday with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Royce Hall, UCLA. 8 p.m. $10-$30. (310) 825-2101.