Joys and Sorrows of the Cajun Son

The easy part about lining up bands for the annual Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival is finding ones that can close each show on a lively note.

The tough part for promoter Franklin Zawacki is cajoling the most authentic practitioners of the traditional styles to leave their homes in Southwest Louisiana and travel 1,600 miles west to play for a couple of days.

For this year’s fest, which runs Saturday and Sunday in Long Beach, the show closers are Queen Ida & Her Zydeco Band and Terrance Simien, both of whom play the Southland regularly and are known for their upbeat, dance-ready music.

Tradition will be well represented this year by Eddie LeJeune & the Morse Playboys. LeJeune, like so many other Cajuns, is a working man who also happens to play music, not a full-time professional musician.

“The most difficult thing was getting in touch with Eddie,” Zawacki said. “I had to leave a message with his wife, because he works all week in the oil fields and only reports back home on weekends.”

Once contact was made, Zawacki said that LeJeune, unlike many Cajun musicians who like to stick close to home, “has a real missionary feel about what he’s doing . . . and he was happy to give us a boost too.”

LeJeune follows such previous festival Cajun-music standard bearers as the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band--featuring BeauSoleil fiddler Michael Doucet, accordionist Marc Savoy and his wife, singer-guitarist-musicologist Ann Savoy--and Walter Mouton & the Scott Playboys, a Louisiana Cajun Hall of Famer who specializes in the Cajun-country hybrid that developed in the 1930s.

LeJeune’s credentials are as imposing as any who have played this event, now in its 13th year. His father was Iry LeJeune, one of the titans of Cajun music, a triple-threat singer, songwriter and accordionist credited with almost single-handedly reviving traditional Cajun music after World War II, when its popularity in the region that produced it had plummeted because of a combination of social and cultural factors.

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Iry LeJeune, who wrote and recorded dozens of songs in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s that have since entered the standard repertoire of Cajun music, was killed at the height of his career in a 1955 car accident. Eddie was 3 at the time, and when he was 5, his grandmother taught him to play the single-row button accordion that is central to traditional Cajun music. It was her way of helping him preserve his Cajun heritage.

Apparently it worked.

“I’m still doing it the way it sounded 35 or 40 years ago,” said LeJeune, 47, during a phone conversation from his home in Morse, La. “I grew up in an environment where the all-acoustic, three-piece bands played at the house dances and nearby clubs. I got to thinking one day how we don’t see that anymore, and that it was time for me to play a part in reviving that tradition.”

LeJeune will be backed Sunday by guitarist Elvie Matthews and his fiddle-playing son, Elvie Jr. On Saturday, the threesome will be joined by the husband-wife team of fiddler Eric Thompson and guitarist Susan Thompson.

“It was Franklin’s idea to have more people to help fill up such a big stage,” LeJeune said. “He has a deep respect for what I do. It’s not like he asked me to include an electric bass, drums or steel guitar. I’ve played with the Thompsons before, and we’re friends. It’s not gonna take away from what I do.”

LeJeune has released four albums since his 1988 debut titled “Cajun Soul,” all built around his nasally voice and solid accordion work. “Le Trio Cadien,” a 1992 collaboration between LeJeune, guitarist-singer D.L. Menard and fiddler Ken Smith, is a striking example of traditional Cajun music at its best.

“Cajun Spirit,” his latest, continues in the same vein both musically and lyrically. Exploring standard Cajun-music themes of joy and sorrow, the 16 tracks on the 1998 album include several traditional numbers, some written by his father as well as others by Austin Pitre, Nathan Abshire and Dewey Balfa; and two Eddie LeJeune originals, “Eh, Ma, Ma” and “Your Turn to Cry.”

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LeJeune said he finds inspiration in the hard but rich life he leads in the small town of Morse, “where we have a school, grocery store and cafe--but no stoplights.”

“Eh, Ma, Ma” captures the excitement of a young man going to his first dance, while the melancholy “Your Turn to Cry” is about a woman who, after having deserted her kids, returns home one day only to find them grown up and gone.

“The songs I write tell little stories that mirror life as I’ve experienced or seen it,” he said. “The tough times, the heartbreak . . .

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but also the remarkable will of the Cajun people. When I’m performing, it’s like I’m actually living out the emotion while I’m singing the songs.”

Even though LeJeune is a Cajun purist, he understands and has even come to appreciate the role that roots-minded but experimental bands such as BeauSoleil and Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys play.

“There’s room to add whatever flavor you want, and I couldn’t very well disagree with what they’re doing because it works for them,” LeJeune said. “The use of drums, sax and the electric bass . . . it just gives people an idea of the different variations that can happen.”

“A lot of the young people aren’t enthused about the three-piece [form]--it just doesn’t have enough energy and power for them,” he said. “If there isn’t a good mix of new and old, the whole genre will grow stale.”

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The purists don’t even seem to object--as long as the traditional isn’t shunted aside.

“Cajun bands not from Louisiana tend to really rock it up, and it’s sad because Cajun music is not that,” Ann Savoy said in a separate interview from her home in Eunice, La. “But it’s getting pushed into being that. You have to have a hard head not to be pulled by the sway of these modern, polished acts.”

Savoy, who compiled and edited “Cajun Music--A Reflection of a People, Vol. I” (Bluebird Press, 1984), added: “Eddie has the soul, if maybe not all of the technical skill, of his father. He’s a branch of this authentic thing. He’s a stickler for tradition, and he’s carrying on a legacy of a certain purity.

“Eddie’s timeless; he’s not a commercial act,” Savoy said. “To get a chance to hear someone like him--outside of his hometown--is a rare treat.”

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Zydeco Festival

Saturday’s Schedule

Noon: Danny Poullard & the Giants of Zydeco Music

1 p.m.: Thomas “Big Hat” Fields Zydeco Band

2: Eddie LeJeune & the Morse Playboys

3:35: Terrance Simien

5:15: Acadiana (plays during Children’s Mardi Gras Parade)

5:45: Queen Ida & Her Zydeco Band

Sunday’s Schedule

Noon: Andre Thierry & Zydeco Magic

1 p.m.: Kenny Menard Zydeco Band

2: Eddie LeJeune & the Morse Playboys

3:35: Acadiana (plays for Children’s Mardi Gras Parade)

4:05: Queen Ida & Her Zydeco Band

5:45: Terrance Simien

+ The 13th Annual Southern California Cajun & Zydeco Festival, Rainbow Lagoon Park, Shoreline Drive at Pine Avenue, Long Beach. Noon-7 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Gates open at 11 a.m. both days. Admission: $24; seniors and students, $17; youths 10 to 16, $5; under 10, free. (562) 427-3713.

Los Angeles Times