>> John Fenn: Good afternoon. We're going to get started here. Thanks for your patience. I'm John Fenn, the head of research and programs at the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress. And I'd like to welcome you on behalf of all the staff to the latest presentation in our ongoing Benjamin A. Botkin lecture series. The Botkin series allows us to highlight the work of leading scholars in the discipline of folklore, ethnomusicology, oral history, and cultural heritage, while enhancing our collections. For the center and the library, the Botkin lectures form an important facet of acquisition activities. Each lecture is video recorded and becomes part of our permanent collection. In addition, the lectures are later posted as webcasts in the library's website where they are available for viewing to internet patrons throughout the world. So, now would be an excellent time to turn off your electronic devices, and or put them in airplane mode, lest you become part of the recording. Today I have the honor of introducing the distinguished folklorist, Billy Jean Ancelet, a professor emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Over the years, we have presented many eminent colleagues, but few of them have made a significant an impact on the documentation, public awareness, and revitalization of their chosen areas of interest as has Professor Ancelet. Even fewer of them have been officially knighted by the Government of France for their efforts [gasps]. Dr. Ancelet was born in Church Point, Louisiana and grew up in the epicenter of Cajun and Creole culture. He French as an undergraduate at what was then University of Southwestern Louisiana, later to be renamed the University of Louisiana Lafayette, and received a Master's in folklore from Indiana University. At IU he taught for a few years before moving on to a doctorate in Etudes Creoles, anthropology and linguistics, from the Universite de Provence in Marseille in 1984. Professor Ancelet's life-long commitment to Louisiana culture has served as a touchstone for his many landmark contributions as a scholar and a culture activist, both inside and outside the academy. He cofounded the Tribute to Cajun Music in 1974, which developed into the annual Festivals Acadiens. And for more than a decade hosted the Rendez-vous des Cajuns, an influential weekly music radio program on KRVS. He has authored an impressive number of books and articles, has been involved in a number of recordings and documentary films, and, as an educator, has trained and guided a generation of scholars specializing in Cajun, Creole, and Franco-American culture. Ancelet has served as chair of the University of Louisiana Modern Languages Department, as well as the founding director of its renowned Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore. His many other awards and honors include being named the Willis Granger and Tom Debaillon Professor of Francophone Studies in 2005 and being made a Chevalier in l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la Republique Francaise in 2006 by the Governor of France for important contributions to French art and literature. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Socient. And, in 2009, he was named Louisiana Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. I would go on, but I think I've given you a sense of why we are so delighted to have Dr. Ancelet here today with us. Please join me in welcoming him for his talk on the theory and practice of folklore in Cajun and Creole Louisiana. [ Applause ] >> Billy Jean Ancelet: Thank you. It kind of made me tired hearing all that. The first part of this talk deals with how I got into the study and practice of folklore. The second deals with what I learned and tried to do after that happened. I will ramble. The story is pretty wild and woolly, but I had a blast and I got paid to do much of it. I grew up in Cajun -- in a Cajun French-speaking family in south Louisiana. As a child, I spent a lot of time with the family of my father's sister in Vatican, Louisiana. They took care of me while my parents worked. Only one person in the house spoke a little English, so I grew up speaking French. When I was in the eighth grade, I found myself in an academic French class for the first time. In it, French was taught as though it were a foreign language. In in the summer of 1967 I spent six weeks in a study program in Switzerland and France. When I returned, I called my aunt in Vatican to tell her about my trip. I was talking a mile a minute about [speaking foreign language] using the grammar and vocabulary I had learned aboard. My aunt interrupted me saying, [speaking foreign language] in perfect Cajun French. Baby, baby, it seems like I can't understand a word you're saying. I immediately understood that I was imitating an imported style of French. That was my first epiphany concerning the value of the vernacular. Fast-forward to 1974, I was in Mamou, Louisiana once again trying to track down Hugh Reed, who you see here with the black eye, to try to get him to tell me some more of the fascinating, tall tales that would eventually make up a significant part of my dissertation, and would be the subject of several of the conference papers, articles, and books that would eventually contribute to my tenure and promotions. I asked a waitress in the Travelers Cafe if she knew where I might find him. She shot back with a curious grin, you're looking for him? When I see him coming, I hide in the kitchen. I don't want to hear all that nonsense. Not long after, I found myself in a graduate French course at Indiana University on the literature of [speaking foreign language]. We were considering [speaking foreign language] from the end of the 17th century, in which his character tries to get to the moon by filling hundreds of bottles with dew and rising with them in the morning. The little people he dreams of meeting eventually make comments about life in his country of origin and their -- from their unique perspective. I raised my hand and pointed out that I had collected remarkably similar oral stories from Hugh Reed [assumed spelling] and his brothers, Irving [assumed spelling] and Revon, in one of which Jim Israel goes to the moon in a runaway hay baler by accident and meets little green men there who comment on life in the storyteller's native Mamou. I was fascinated by the apparent resilience of this tradition and narrative strategy among people who after -- who were, after all the descendants of the French settlers who left France in the same 17th-century to come to America -- North America, and eventually to Louisiana. My professor did not understand why I would bring up such an unrelated issue in her class on French literature. I realized I might be in the wrong place. By then, my highly improvised early research on Cajun and Creole music, folktales, and language had made me understand that my study of French was driven by my interest in understanding the Frenchness [phonetic] of Louisiana. I decided that I would drop the class, do my best to finish out the semester, and go back home to rethink my plans. But I had a card in my pocket from Ralph Rentschler, the director of the Smithsonian Institution's folklife program, who had assisted us in preparing and presenting the first tribute to Cajun music concert in March of 1974. There he is between two ballad singers. When I had mentioned to him that I was going to Indiana University, he gave me his card with a message on it and said that I should say hello to his friend, Henry Glassie, at IU's Folklore Institute. Out of a sense of obligation after that incident in the French class, I dropped in to the institute and asked the receptionist, [inaudible], if there was someone named Henry Glassie there. I didn't know that Professor Glassie was an internationally renowned folklorist. It would've been kind like, you know, going to the College de France and saying, is there some guy named Claude Levi-Strauss here [laughter]? She gasped, pointed behind her to his office, and said, yeah, he's in there. I heard Glassie chuckle and say, who is that? I said, I'm Barry Ancelet from Louisiana. He said, come on in. I introduced myself, handing him Rentschler's card, and he said, oh, you're from Louisiana. Do you know Dewey Balfa? I nearly screamed, yes, I did. And then I told him what had just happened. He said, well, maybe this is where you need to be. I transferred to the folklore program and was able to preserve my ties with the French program through other professors there, including linguist Albert Valdman and Africanist Emile Snyder, who understood and encouraged my particular interests. Why folklore? I didn't even know there was such an academic discipline until I arrived at Indiana University in 1974. Soon enough, I found myself taking classes from Richard Dorson, Linda Dague, Mary Ellen Brown, Bruce Rose, a literal who's who in American folklore. I didn't know who any of them were. I found out. But I had already come to understand, through my experiences in Louisiana, that the -- that the language was inseparable from the culture that it expressed. Another thing that was obvious was that very little of this could be found on library shelves. Ultimately, getting at Louisiana's French heritage and culture would require -- would require -- An improvised hybrid approach involving real people in real time. That approach turned out to be folklore. And I must say, also, that some of this had to do with the counterculture movement. This was, after all, you know, the late '60s, early '70s. And, you know, we were interested in protesting. Are we good? We were interested in protesting. And, for us, the counterculture was protesting against Americanization, and it involved revitalization of Louisiana French language and culture. No accident that the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana was founded in 1968, 1968 when so many other things happened. The study of culture, literature, and language through the lens of folklore has been the foundation for my entire career, which I admit I have improvised all along the way. I left in the Indiana University with a master's degree in folklore, and eventually continued my graduate studies at Aix-en-Provence where I received a doctorate in Creole studies, combining anthropology and linguistics working with Robert Sonoseau [assumed spelling] and Jean-Claude Bouvier [assumed spelling], who were reinventing and reinvigorating the study of orality in France. My thesis included that story about the accidental voyage to the moon, among many others that I collected throughout south Louisiana. I guess that it was fitting because my theoretical approach to just about everything I have ever studied has been based on the rich and fecund principles of storytelling, including improvisation, vernacular creation, and carnivalesque humor. I also dedicated my first ever article, published as a folklorist, to the waitress in the Travelers Cafe [laughter], who never understood what a supposedly serious college student was doing looking for somebody she tried to get away from every day. I've often found myself exploring issues whose academic value has not been immediately evident. Much of my research is based on fieldwork in bars, in barbershops, and dance halls and back porches and Mardi Gras runs. Can you find me? [ Inaudible ] Am I there? No. I will appear to you. There I am [laughter]. From that perspective, you really understand the Mardi Gras. [ Inaudible ] Oh, I'll leave that to you to find. It's Mardi Gras after all. As per the old saw, it has not always been easy, but somebody had to do it. My research has resulted in the usual articles and books, but also in documentary films, television, and radio programs, festivals, museum and photographic exhibitions, album liner notes, public lectures, literary readings, teacher training seminars, reports to state and federal agencies. I'm grateful and fortunate that my colleagues and administrators at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have been flexible enough to recognize the value of what I do. I've had a remarkably collaborative career by the honor of good fortune to work with generous, inspiring colleagues, including editors, filmmakers, sound engineers, production crews, fellow teachers, folklorists, historians, linguists, poets, playwrights, screenplay writers, photographers, journalists, a few politicians, lawyers, and even a chef. They've all provided me with the countless opportunities for collaboration and years of inspiration and dedication to our common causes. They all taught me how to read and write and look and listen and wonder. I owe a debt -- a debt of gratitude, as well, to the singers and storytellers and Mardi Gras runners and dancers, including my family and community of friends, who have always so generously shared what they know and do with me, most of them [speaking foreign language], learn much of what I have come to know from vernacular professors, such as Dewey Balfa and Ben Guine and Clifton Chenier and Canray Fontenot, [inaudible], Hugh and Irvine Reed, among many others. I've been honored to work with them and learn from them, and I've come to love them all as friends. I've had the honor of eulogizing many of them when they passed away. It was never only the songs and the stories and the crafts, it was the coffee and camaraderie, the bull sessions and the jam sessions and the fishing trips and the serious and casual conversations about almost everything and nothing in particular. The rest of this talk focuses on the relationship between theory and the practice of folklore between what folklorists think and how they convey the results of that thought to a range of audiences from other colleagues to the general public. First, a word about theory and practice. Some folklorists have seen a dichotomy between the two. I have always seen them as inextricably integrated. I'm typically more interested in discussing the practice than the theory, but both are always in play. I came to understand, for myself, what Regina Bendix eventually theorized in her -- in search of authenticity in countless conversations with musicians and storytellers and the makers of things about the [inaudible], as well as what Elaine Lawless eventually called reciprocal fieldwork by negotiating meaningful and productive relationships with countless, generous collaborators, whom I learned early on were much more than just informants. In my transcriptions of the recorded interviews I made with them, I still cannot bring myself to identify them as L1 and L0 as linguistic practice recommends. The most -- for example, the most I will reduce Eva Boudreaux, with whom I shared storytelling sessions and watched shoot squirrels out of her back door, is EB. I came to understand what an implement -- and there she is shooting squirrels in the backyard [laughter]. I came to understand and implement issues that scholars, such as Walter Ong, Paul Zumthor, Pierre Borgia [assumed spelling], and Bruce Jackson articulated concerning orality and the challenge of interpreting and representing stories in written form by trudging through an evolution of strategies to resolve these issues for my own -- for my use in my own work. I came to improvise takeoffs on what Clifford Geertz called deep play, and what Mikhail Batin [assumed spelling] and Victor Turner called the carnivalesque laughter while lying face down in the middle of the [inaudible] Mardi Gras circle dressed as a pregnant woman waiting to be ritually flogged and then giving birth to a bottle of whiskey [laughter]. From that perspective, you learn a lot. You understand a lot about Mardi Gras. I came to understand the importance of performance and contextual considerations described by scholars such as Roger Abrahams, Kenny Goldstein, and Nick Spitzer by thinking through the very real and evolving performance and contextual issues involved in documenting and presenting folk performers and putting those into practice in festivals and concerts, museum exhibitions and documentary films, in radio programs and community presentations -- In what I have come to call guerrilla academics, sneaking education to people while they think they're being entertained. For me, theories are not ends in themselves. They are, instead, the tools and blueprints I need to understand and present what I am studying. By any means necessary, to borrow from Jean-Paul Sartre and Malcolm X, I have imported some, improvised variance of others, and then I use them. For me, the pursuit of the universal always began with the local. The universe, after all, is made up of an infinity of localities. The practice of folklore generally starts with fieldwork, the process of gathering information from cultural sources. For me, it was the only way to reach the information that was otherwise missing from the record. The most important, untapped source for the information on Cajuns and Creoles are Cajuns and Creoles themselves. The fieldwork-based approach of folkloristics provides a method to reach that source. The naturally interdisciplinary nature of folkloristics necessarily integrating considerations of history and art, text and context provides the wide range of approaches that necessary to understand the complexities of culture and tradition, including oral tradition, traditional music, vernacular architecture, folk art, seasonal rituals, and other cultural expressions. Folkloristics also leads to considerations of important cultural and social issues, such as conservation, transmission, and innovation within the context of tradition. And folkloristics and linguistics make perfect partners in the effort to understand the context of French Louisiana. Now, getting back to earlier. The reason I knew Dewey Balfa when Henry Glassie asked is another part of the story. In 1972 I spent an academic year in France, '72, '73. Homesick after nearly a year away from my native south Louisiana, I was drawn to an announcement of Roger Mason performing [speaking foreign language]. There's the countercultural connection. There, among many other songs, I heard him playing what I recognized to be a simplified version of the Crowley Two-Step. [ Music ] I heard that when I was buying my ticket. [ Music ] And when I heard that, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I said, that's what I'm missing. That's what's been missing here. And, so, I rushed down and had a wonderful evening with him. After the concert, I met with Mason, an American folk musician who had encountered Cajun music on the folk festival circuit, and who was then performing it in France. I told him how much I appreciated hearing -- he was an Army brat and traveled all over the world. I told him how much I appreciated hearing the music from home. Growing up in the late 1950's and '60s, I listened to rock and roll like the rest of my generation, but we heard Cajun music on the radio, on television, and when it was daddy's turn to choose the records. Mason said, if you're from Louisiana you must know the people I learned from, Dewey Balfa, Nathan Abshire. I didn't know any of them at that point. They had not come up in any of my classes back home. Mason suggested if I was interested in learning more, I should look up Dewey Balfa upon my return to Louisiana. That's exactly what I did. I want to Dewey Balfa's house just south of Basile, introduced myself, telling him about the experience I had in France. I said, are you Dewey Balfa? Yeah. Well, my name is Barry Ancelet and I [making sounds with mouth]. I was talking like an auctioneer. He said, calm down, son [laughter]. Come on in, said the spider to the fly [laughter]. And the rest, as they say, is history. We started a conversation that went on -- sorry. That's him. We started a conversation that went on for nearly two decades. I learned at least as much from Dewey as from any professor I ever had in any formal academic setting. People are most aware of my work in Cajun and Creole music, perhaps because of the high visibility of Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, which I helped found and still direct, and the weekly Liberty Theater live radio show, which I did for 24 years. But what first drew me to the study of Cajun and Creole folk cultures was oral tradition. My first book, Cajun and Creole Music Makers, grew out of my work with musicians, but it was based more on their stories than their music. Elemore Morgan Junior and I got the idea to visit the musicians involved in the first festival to visit them where they lived, worked, and played, to interview them about their lives and experiences, and to photograph them in their own worlds. This is Vares Connor [assumed spelling], well-known, or, not so well-known fiddler. Nathan Abshire on his front porch. What we were doing was indeed fieldwork, but it felt more like visiting. It was our intention to see and hear in their own terms, as I wrote in the introduction, these barbers and bus drivers and farmers and firefighters and mechanics and masons, who sell discount furniture and discount gas and insurance and insulation work nine to five and seven to seven, onshore and offshore, and make art out of everyday life, because they were becoming important figures in this cultural self-preservation experiment. Elemore and I worked for 10 years on the project, collecting oral histories and taking photographs of these remarkable performers in various contexts, from their kitchens and front porches, to festival stages and concert halls, in Louisiana and far beyond. Around the same time, I became interested in Louisiana French fictional tales. French-speaking Cajuns and Creoles had virtually no literary tradition since most did not have the opportunity to learn to read or write French. Yet, we did have a tradition of oral poetry in songs and oral stories in tales. And just because the storytellers and singers could not themselves write their own stories and songs, this did not mean that the stories and songs could not be written by someone who had learned to write the language of their expression. In an attempt to place these traditions and [inaudible] that they represent on the record, I began recording folktales, as well as folksongs and transcribing them. Lacking any formal training in the beginning, I improvised my own first fieldwork forays based on instinct and good intentions. You know, that road to hell [laughter]? I found that identifying potential singers was fairly easy. Friends and family members were generally aware of those in their midst who can sing. Identifying storytellers proved to be more of a challenge. Everybody tells stories, but who knows who does? At least initially, when -- like some of my predecessors, Alcee Fortier, Elizabeth Brandon, Corinne Saucier. I was using fieldwork techniques designed to elicit the kind of animal tales and magic tales that clearly illustrate the connection between French Louisiana and its historical and cultural roots in France and Africa. I was confounded by this curious difficulty in finding those kinds of stories, found some, but it was hard. And it began to occur to me that something must be wrong. Corinne Saucier had written in the introduction to her collection of 33 Louisiana French folktales that her collection of 33 stories was small, but representative of a culture that was fast disappearing in our mechanized age. I thought, there's something wrong with this, because my admittedly activist perspective made me unwilling to admit that the tradition was dying and, second, I knew that there were stories out there because of the thousands I had heard over the years in my father's barbershop where I spent many afternoons after school and around barbecue pits and in shipping boats -- in fishing boats and lots of other places, in bars. So, I rethought my fieldwork strategy and I realized that it was more effective to look for storytellers than stories. That information about carnivalesque humor was more likely to come from folks in a bar or a barbershop or a garage than from those running City Hall or local museums or churches. An essential aspect of my change in methodology involved being open to any context and form of storytelling. I found people remembered from long ago -- I found that my early method had exposed the tradition of memory stories that some people remembered from long ago, but no longer really actively told. While my new approach exposed a more active tradition, jokes and tall tales and personal experience narratives that people were telling each other on their own, unprompted by a folklorist question. I basically learned to shut up and listen. It became -- quickly became clear that stories were not ends in themselves. The storytellers themselves were the real treasures. My aim was to consider their ability to adapt, innovate, create new forms of stories through their talent and personality. Their willingness to share their knowledge was essential to the progress of my research. The first time I met Mrs. Eva Boudreaux, for example, she told me four stories, that's the lady shooting the gun back in -- she told me four stories, including an animal tale featuring [speaking foreign language], a version of [speaking foreign language], the first from African origins, the second from French origins, responding to my request for such tales. By the time I visited her one year later, I had had my epiphany and opened my consideration of tales to include anything she wanted to tell. She told me seven more stories. Some of them jokes, personal experience stories. When I returned home that night, I found a message that Mrs. Boudreaux had called saying she wanted -- she had some more stories she wanted to tell me. I said, I know. I went earlier today to record her. My mother said, no, no, she just called and said she wants you to go back tomorrow because she's got some more she forgot to tell you today. I returned the next day and she told me eight more stories. Over the years, she dredged up dozens and dozens and dozens of stories from her memory to tell me, many of them while waiting for the bass to bite in her pond. Similarly, I first met Ben Guine while tracking down leads on storytellers the old way, in Parks, Parks, Louisiana, a place called Promised Land. A little boy who had won the foot race to my truck when I asked a group of children for help in finding where people on my list lived, eventually took me to his grandfather's house. He went with us to the last house and heard what we were asking for and, when we left disappointed because the lady didn't tell those kinds of stories, he said, my grandfather tells those stories. So, we took -- went to his grandfather's house and there I met Ben Guine, who quite literally left a plate of steaming crawfish stew on his kitchen table to come into the living room to tell us tales, literally preferring to tell stories than eat. Over the years he, too, told me dozens of stories of all sorts. His remarkable storytelling talents and wide repertoire of stories eventually attracted considerable attention, including a filming session by Louisiana Public Broadcasting on the porch of his little house in Promised Land along the Bayou Teche. To the astonishment and eventual delight of his neighbors, who had stopped listening to his stories years before, but now LPB was there, and a few weeks later he appears on television and, so, Ben gets reconsidered in his own community. Based on a philosophy of cultural activism again, I tried to find ways to integrate people like this into the ongoing effort to preserve Louisiana's French language and culture. Mrs. Boudreaux, Ben Guine, and several other storytellers appeared in storytelling events at festivals and schools, thrilling crowds and schoolchildren with their impressive repertoires and masterful styles. Sometimes in addition to, sometimes instead of documenting and analyzing past performances within the scholarly community, some folklorists strive to program and present one of those next performances in a setting that will communicate it to a wider audience, not on the page but on a stage. This practice brings challenges of its own. For example, the most sensitively programmed cultural presentation at a folk festival is not the same as the natural performance in its own time and place. But some of these concerns can be resolved, or at least mitigated, with the same sort of careful and serious study of performance and context as that produced in the academic setting. Programming issues were directly related to the activist fieldwork and archival philosophies at the heart of the University of Louisiana Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore, now a part of the Center for Louisiana Studies. The theoretical issues underpinning the fieldwork that initially led to the production of the first tribute to Cajun Music Festival, March 26, 1974, as well as the issues that emerged and evolved as the concert became an annual event, were directly related to the establishment of the center's archives. The programming of the festival was based on an integration of ideas that grew out of two distinct camps. On the one hand, activist folklife-based considerations as influenced by the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife and, on the other, linguistic-based considerations that grew out of the Council for the development of French and Louisiana's language and cultural preservation initiatives. Fieldwork and programming practices evolved based on a desire to discover and present excellent folk performers from real life context, avoiding more self-conscious public purveyors of folkloric culture. The fieldwork practices that grew out of the festival experience also contributed to the fieldwork practices that address the collection and analysis of other traditional genres in French Louisiana, including oral tradition and material culture. Selecting the collection of performers who would essentially define the moment in Cajun music and zydeco each year posed interesting problems and opportunities for festival producers, including the incorporation of young performers and the new emerging styles that are a necessary part of any living tradition. Dewey Balfa put it best. He said, I'm interested in the very life of this culture -- And how it continues to evolve its own terms. I don't want to freeze dry it or pin it to the wall like a dead butterfly. Dewey was not only a musician, but what folklorists have come to call a community scholar. That is, a member of a folk community who has learned to address the issues that are at the heart of the study and practice of folklore, such as cultural equity and the relationship between preservation and innovation within the traditional context. Inspired by Dewey and enriched by his connections to the Smithsonian folklife program staff, including, especially, Ralph Rentschler, who had first recorded him in 1964 as a fieldworker for the Newport Folk Festival, we prepared the first tribute to Cajun Music Festival together. The fieldwork we did for the festival was a natural extension of the fieldwork that had begun with John and Alan Lomax, who collected folksongs in Louisiana for the Library of Congress in 1930 -- in the 1930's. The Lomax's had a sort of new deal style activist agenda intending for their collection to serve as the basis for cultural recycling projects in regions throughout the country. Based on his experience in French Louisiana in 1934, and from his position on the Newport Folk Festival board in 1964, Alan sent Ralph Rentschler and Mike Seeger to Louisiana to identify musicians who would be invited to perform at Newport later that year. Following leads from Harry Auster, who had collected in the area a few years before, they found Gladdie Thibodeaux, Louis Venesse LeJeune, and Dewey Balfa, who served as a last-minute replacement on guitar, by the way. Dewey noted that they initially thought the crowd hated their music because they weren't dancing [laughter]. Then, at the end of that first song, the crowd applauded. It was an experience the dance hall musicians had never had, but also one they never forgot. Dewey reported turning to Venesse and saying, what are they doing [laughter]? He was overwhelmed by this reception for what was often dismissed as nothing but chanky-chank [phonetic] back home. Came back home to Louisiana determined to spread the good news, that Cajun music was appreciated outside the area. He maintained close contact with Rentschler, who became director of folklife programs at the Smithsonian in '68. There, Rentschler went on to produce the annual Festival of American Folklife, celebrating the country's rich, cultural diversity. These festivals often featured Cajun and Creole music that Rentschler had encountered during his early fieldwork. Through his steady contact with Rentschler and other folklorists, Balfa learned to articulate such issues as cultural conservation and the process of tradition. The first Cajun music festival was an overwhelming success, surprising even the most enthusiastic of his organizers. Musicians were selected according to the -- to notions of cultural authenticity established by Rentschler and Balfa. No crooners, Rentschler cautioned. His preference for the high, clear, the high-pitched vocals and unadorned instrumental styles of early Cajun music dominated the evening. The concert was structured to feature the historical development of Cajun and Creole music, ballad singers, Inez Catalan and Marcus Landry, twin fiddlers Dennis McGee and Sady Courville, early stylists, Mark Savoir [assumed spelling], Lionel Leleux, and Vares Connor, Nathan Abshire, the Balfa brothers, the Ardwin [assumed spelling] family, as well as more modern sounds of Clifton Chenier, [inaudible], and the Cajun Aces. Cajun country star, Jimmy Newman, originally from Mamou, but then living in Nashville, whose hit Lache Pas La Patate, was in full swing, was used to anchor the concert despite his sophisticated instrumental arrangements and silky vocals. Even Rentschler saw the wisdom of Dewey's brilliant plan to use Newman's popularity to attract a crowd that would then be there to hear the rest of the evening. It worked. The many in attendance commented then and later that they had come to hear Newman and were, in some cases reminded of, and in others, surprised, by the power of the more traditional performers. The festival packed Lafayette's Blackham Coliseum far past fire code. Despite lightning, thunder, and driving rain, it turned out to be the largest mass rally of what came to be called the Louisiana French Renaissance Movement. I knew the fire -- you can see the crowd there. I knew the fire marshal wouldn't shut us down because his dad was playing in the third group [laughter]. Southern politics. Organizers also saw the opportunity to use the energy produced by this initial concert to fuel a long-term project. In the momentum of the moment, the university created the Center for the Acadian and Creole Folklore to integrate this new field of study into the academic community. Balfa, who had seen the benefit of the archives at the Library of Congress, and at the Smithsonian Institution, insisted that we needed a similar bank of information on ourselves in Louisiana. When I pointed out that I didn't have the financial resources to produce an archive, Balfa pointedly asked, do you have enough money to buy one tape? I said, yeah. He continued, then buy one. Go out and record an interview and put that tape on the shelf. Then record another one when you can afford it. And when you put that second tape next to the first one on the shelf, you have the beginnings of an archive. He was right, as usual. The beginnings of the archive were just that homemade, and it worked. But, at the same time, counsel for the development of French in Louisiana bought dozens of tapes and funded early recording efforts using fieldwork tapes in French radio programming. Soon enough, we also received financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation that paid for hundreds of tapes, which were recorded and gathered on the shelves to extend the archive. We also contacted folklorists who had worked in Louisiana in the past, such as Lomax, Auster, and Rentschler, who were all happy to provide copies of their fieldwork collections. So, gathered -- finally gathered in one place for the first time, the center's archives provided a sense of the evolution and development of Cajun and Creole music from unaccompanied ballad tradition to contemporary dance band styles. Fieldwork on oral tradition and material culture was added as well. The field work of students and colleagues enriched our understanding of who we were and how we had come to be that way. But the collection was not meant to be an end in itself. Instead, it was always intended to serve as a resource -- a resource for cultural recycling. For example, when the center acquired copies of Lomax's 1934 field recordings, it was not only to repatriate this important research for archival purposes. Copies were also provided to the families of the original performers and contemporary musicians were encouraged to use the collection as a source for new, brand-new old songs. This eventually happened. Where's my cursor? Well. I was going to let you hear it. >> You can see it on the screen. >> Billy Jean Ancelet: You can see it on the screen? [ Inaudible ] Okay. [ Music ] This is [inaudible] from the Lomax recordings from '34. [ Music ] Oops, sorry. And this is from 2007. [ Music ] Isn't that remarkable? As Anna Chairetakis, Alan's daughter, said when I played some of this for her, my God, it worked [laughter]. In the spirit of cultural recycling, scholars and staffers associated with the Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore have participated in the production of festivals and special performances, television, radio programs, and offered classes and workshops through the university's French and Francophone studies and music school programs, produced books and articles, communicate new discoveries, and interpretations to the local community, as well as the scholarly community. There were precious few books and articles available on Cajun and Creole culture, and most of the few that there had been done by outsiders who often misunderstood the culture. I became interested in writing so that there would be some, but books and articles do not reach the larger -- the large audience of Cajuns and Creoles themselves, who especially needed to have access to information about themselves. So, center associates explored other ways to disseminate our findings. We joined forces with record producers to release archival recordings. We worked with radio producers and filmmakers to produce special programs and documentaries, collaborated with educational institutions to make singers and storytellers available for classes and special lecture series. This research typically focuses on contemporary, as well as historical aspects of these issues, considering folklore as a vital ongoing process rather than a stagnant product. Of particular interest is the process of Creolization, the unique blending of cultures that occurred in Louisiana to produce the folk architecture, music, oral tradition, and cuisine of the region. Through this range of activities, we try to integrate both sides of folkloristics, the scholarly, and the public without getting caught in the perceived trap between the two. Folk festivals have often -- tend to follow a high-energy model oriented toward large audiences developed decades ago at such events as the National Folk Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. This method of presentation is had positive effects, not the least of which has been providing the national level validation for regional folk performers by having them perform on stages high off the ground with fancy electronic amplification before large, enthusiastic audiences, often alongside nationally known performers. This method also has certain limitations. A quieter, more intimate performance genres are difficult to program in such high-energy settings. In most cultures, ballad singing is intended for listeners, that is, without dancing. It does not usually happen before thousands, or even hundreds, of people. In a large festival setting, both audience and performer must be prepared for this change in format. Smaller, more intimate so-called workshops can provide a more familiar intimate setting, but even these may not be enough to set a cultural event in its best performance context. By carefully -- drawing on careful observation of the rules in nature of cultural performance in a natural setting, folklorists can develop better, more sensitive, and more effective and less abusive methods of presenting folklore and folklife in public settings. Storytelling, for example, has been one of the most difficult cultural features to program effectively in a festival setting. Usually storytellers are tacitly expected to perform as standup comics, though many do not possess the skills for entertaining the masses, nor are they necessarily interested in developing those skills. But settings can be renegotiated to work better for performer and audience as well. Storytelling is generally, by nature, an intimate performance that occurs among a small group of people who know each other and share a common language and references. Some storytellers can go a long way toward reaching a festival or a concert size audience, which may number in the hundreds or thousands, but a crowd that large will strain even the most outstanding traditional performer. During a performance of what used to be our university's French House, Creole storyteller, Ben Guine, that I met that night over crawfish etouffee, renegotiated his audience in a remarkable way. A crowd of some 70 people showed up to hear his extraordinary -- this extraordinary storyteller perform. He was pleased with the show of interest, but, as he began, I noticed that something was off. He was telling well, but he wasn't taking off as I had heard him do so often while listening to his stories in his living room or on his front porch. I realized later that he was straining to engage every person in the room. He realized this before I did. I was sitting next to him. About a third of the way through the first story he accidentally bumped my knee during one of his expansive gestures. He was trying to hug everybody. When he noticed I was within reach, he turned his chair to face me and proceeded to tell me the stories. I was an audience he could handle, tapping and pushing and pinching me to make appropriate points. I was also an audience he trusted, because I understood the stories. He knew that. He hit stride and the rest of the evening the crowd watched him tell me stories, which was much better for everyone concerned. When I realize what had happened, I began experimenting with new formats for programming storytelling based on the concept that Ben had instinctively put into practice. This programming strategy, a sort of theater in the round where storytellers tell each other stories while the audience listens in, became the basis for the Louisiana Storytellers' Pavilion that travelled to festivals throughout the state in 1984. By 1974, when Dewey Balfa talked the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana into sponsoring the first Tribute to Cajun Music concert, he had already come to understand enough about the dynamics of context and performance from his own experiences to know that a Cajun crowd would dance if it were at all possible, as they did every Saturday night in dance halls throughout south Louisiana. The intent of the concert we were producing was to enable Cajuns to appreciate the value of their own music by getting them to listen to it. So, he strongly suggested holding the concert in a setting where dancing would not be possible. That evening 12,000 Cajuns wiggled in their seats [laughter] in Lafayette's Blackham Coliseum and listened to the sounds that they had only heard before while dancing. Sometimes festival organizers develop new ways of presenting culture based on own observations of performance in its own context. Sometimes participants can do -- can and do take over with their own theories about context and performance. Over the years, Dewey Balfa was visited by many folklorists and invited to many festivals. He learned from them what he needed to know to guide his own efforts to regenerate interest and respect for Cajun music in his native south Louisiana. This information also turned Balfa into quite an expert on folk festival theory, sometimes to the chagrin of festival organizers who have not always thought out the issues as well as he had, and certainly did not feel them as he did. There are many examples that illustrate Dewey's understanding of culture's process rather than product. For years, he tried to convince festival organizers to allow him to come with his current band as he performed in dance halls every Saturday night. He eventually won a partial victory coming with most of his dance band, but he was never allowed to bring along his steel guitar to the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife. The argument was that the steel guitar was too modern, an inappropriate and inauthentic addition to traditional instrumentation. That's tradition from their perspective. Never mind the fact that Dewey Balfa, long recognized as a pillar of cultural preservation in America, chose to perform weekly with a steel guitar in his band, just as dozens of other Cajun bands did. In 1978 he finally confronted festival personnel, Smithsonian festival personnel on the issue asking them pointedly, are you trying to present Cajun music as you wish it still were, or as it really is? And there was that exact same deafening silence in the room. He was allowed that year to bring along fiddler Dick Richard, who also played to his own steel guitar. Small steps. In 1985, Dewey delivered a brilliant extemporaneous address on the traditional process from the stage of the cultural conservation area of the Washington Festival. Invited as an outstanding example of the effort to conserve America's traditional culture, he pointed out halfway through a 45-minute set that he had been playing some traditional songs, songs that he and his brothers had -- Learned from the family tradition. He went on to say that he now would like to play some songs that he and his brothers had composed recently. He went on to say that he didn't have to turn around to know that what he just said had made some people backstage very nervous, because he was there to represent cultural conservation. But, for him, cultural conservation did not mean preserving things. For him, cultural conservation meant preserving the life of the culture, the process. And, if he was successful, then the culture was going to be alive and well and continue to grow and evolve it its own terms. And, if this effort was successful in his native Louisiana, then 50 or so years from now, some young musicians were going to need some songs that were 50 or so years old to play. So, he had made some and he was going to play one. He did. He played [inaudible], and the stage personnel and audience were delighted to hear that his new song sounded just like the old ones from his family tradition. He kept this remarkable demonstration by pointing out, he was not one to leave a point alone, explaining that they sounded like the old stuff because they were coming from the same tradition and through the same process and being performed by the same guy, so why wouldn't they sound familiar? But it was brand new. Festival organizers should never be afraid to be surprised. The people we invite to perform at festivals sometimes are undereducated, but never -- I've never found many to be unintelligent. In a sense, Dewey's presentation was much more successful and authentic than the authentic like one that was originally intended for the cultural conservation stage that day. The audience and festival personnel alike had the opportunity to learn a fancy lesson about culture. After years of performing in such context, Dewey learned well how to operate the machinery. In this case, he was aiming his message in two directions at once. The immediate message was aimed at the audience, but that message and its reception was obviously meant to rebound backstage. At the Liberty Theater we did a lot of field work on the fly, sometimes discovering things that were happening right on stage. This is Mitch Reed playing with Goldman Thibodeau. He was there to play with another group and decided to play with Goldman and, so, why wouldn't he? Sometimes the field work was very close to the presentation, as in the case of Horace Trahan's debut. Some of you may know Horace Trahan, young Cajun musician. Helena Putnam, our Liberty stage manager, reported hearing a remarkable young accordion player and singer at a jam session at the [inaudible] Acadian Culture Center next door earlier that afternoon. During the Liberty show that night, she recognized the young man sitting in the audience and pointed him out to me. I had learned to trust her instincts. On a whim, and trusting her based on years of shared mutual observations from our backstage perspective, I went down into the audience while a song was on, was being played, and invited -- asked him if he would be interested in performing a song or two. Yes, sir, he said. And he came up and we crowbarred him into the proceedings that evening, the performance that evening. Got him alone sitting on a chair in the middle of the stage during a stolen moment between scheduled performances. The crowd spontaneously gave him a standing ovation. Not bad for an improvised debut. He eventually returned to perform many times with his own band and others. Another example, and the final one I'll give you, is -- has to do with negotiating performance and context on the fly. It comes from an idea I had when the [speaking foreign language] was looking to include a Louisiana French component to their event in 1999. In an attempt to take into consideration issues that context-minded folklorists, such as Frank Proschan and Charles Cantwell [assumed spelling], have addressed calling for more holistic community-based programming at folk festivals, I suggested they invite the Basile Mardi Gras as a group. Within this group I suggested they would have cultural critical mass that would include culinary traditions, the communal gumbo, traditional music, the ritual song, and music played for dancing at the host's houses, and material culture, mask and costume making, as well as the performance of the ritual itself. Festival organizers were eventually convinced to try this integrated presentation, rather than the more typical approach that would involve disparate bearers of various traditional arts. So, Basile group went to -- went to Quebec where they demonstrated the various aspects of their Mardi Gras. Visitors could watch the masks being made then try them on. They could watch the making of the gumbo then taste. They could listen to the music and dance to it. Then the Basile group was asked to put the whole affair together and demonstrate a run. The museum organizers said, well, what does this -- how does this work? What does it look like? Which they were happy to do. They had demonstrated their tradition before at Liberty -- at the Liberty Theater, as well as a few outings at the Louisiana Folklife Festival in several cities within the state. But the only real way to demonstrate a Mardi Gras run is to run Mardi Gras. It's the only way that the carnivalesque dynamic can be conjured. So, they cracked up a performance in the museum. Now, of course, Mardi Gras runs are not static. They move. The whole point is to visit and disturb or tickle what you determine to be your host community. So, they headed out the back door after this performance -- Formed up in the park behind the museum, and headed out into the streets. They didn't have a clear idea of where they were -- where they were, but they instinctively improvise the route and headed down the sidewalk looking for the nearest bar [laughter] doing their ceremonial begging routines for passersby who had no clue what this was about. Luckily, most seemed to figure out fairly quickly that this must be some festive performance associated with the nearby museum. I was pressed into service to hastily explain to those they encountered what was going on. Some understood a bit and smiled. Most had little or no idea how to take the performance and shied away from the group -- Clutching purses, bags, and children [laughter]. The museum and festival workers didn't know this would happen either, but were reluctant to restrain what they had, after all, asked the group to do. We were, quite frankly, all intrigued to watch the spontaneous carnivalesque improvisation. The group processed down the street with a small entourage of handlers trying to buffer the public as much as possible. They finally made it to a bar, which should be familiar territory, and went inside. They asked for permission to perform, gathered together, sang their song, danced to the music provided by their accompanying musicians, and then genuinely begged for donations from everybody inside, including drinks from the bartender. Alerted to the situation and made aware that this was a spillover from the nearby [inaudible], everybody happily cooperated and the group left happily. But Mardi Gras is also about challenging thresholds. So, once back out of the street, they escalated the stakes. They gathered at a bus stop and waited for the next bus [laughter]. I was able to convince Captain Ryder [assumed spelling] that this might not be a good idea, since neither of us knew Quebec City bus routes and how far the bus would take them. They toyed with the idea of boarding the bus anyway, mostly to make me nervous, then they resumed their procession along the sidewalk after a brief standoff with the bus driver over who should be collecting money. They hit the next bar they saw. The experience from the first bar was virtually repeated. When they left again I was able to convince the captain that this was just a demonstration run after all and that we could head back to the museum now. He agreed and led his contingent back, but not without interacting with everyone they passed along the way. When they were safely back into the museum -- They sang their song again, danced a bit more, and then served and ate the gumbo with all who were there according to their tradition. To the relief of organizers, no one had been lost or hurt or too offended, but it was definitely more Mardi Gras than they had anticipated [laughter]. It was probably less than the participants would happily have done if given more reign. The group had extracted something like a Mardi Gras feeling out of this artificial experience by insisting on going out on their own terms and temporarily ignoring efforts to deter them. So, where does this leave us? All sorts of highly technical studies have derived from a study -- academic study of folklore. And, in my experience, I found that the possibilities of focusing, especially on performance and contextual theory in folk arts programming in the public sector, didn't need to be conflictual. Their cultural imperatives in each performance of traditional culture, including setting, time, constant negotiation between performers and audience, to consider -- the consideration of these complex features have led to a lot of studies. Many of these focus on the capturing of traditional performance for contemplation and analysis. Folklore's espousing contextual and performance centered approaches have insisted on the importance of studying the very life and nature of the cultural performance in its most natural expression and setting. Well, that's what Dewey Balfa was hoping for. Their discoveries and subsequent theories can and do serve to adapt and improve public presentation of folk arts, whether within a community-based cultural presentation, in a cultural presentation destined for visitors, as well as members of the community, or in a multicultural presentation outside the community. Conversely, folk -- public folklore -- the public sector folklorists can and do extract and engage in performance theory by observing how performers adapt themselves to unfamiliar settings and unfamiliar settings to themselves. These strategies can be identified to help refine and improvise future presentations and settings. And we've studied lots of things. I'm going to hastened through the next few moments. We've studied lots of things, such as the evolution of house types, from what we found in France and Acadia, the Canadian Maritimes, and how those got improvised in Louisiana. The addition of porches, which shows cultural confluence of the Acadian and African [inaudible]. And then, what happens when that house type is in everybody's head and you build a modern house on a slab? And what happens when Katrina and Rita blow through and you get flooded? Things are constantly being negotiated in very smart and meaningful and ways that make sense. Food, you know, some -- there are notions of traditional food ways that didn't accommodate. If you get stuck in history, they don't accommodate for Cajun eggrolls, crawfish tamales, microwave rue, and some other things that strain the imagination. [ Laughter ] All the while, we also enjoy hamburgers and fried chicken with iced tea and Dr. Pepper without feeling we are betraying our Cajuness [phonetic]. So, I was going to give you a few examples of -- in the world of Cajun music, but let me just do one. Basically, it has to do with, how do you get -- how did we get from performing here back in the '30s to performing here today? There's a remarkable difference between the music that was played here and the music that's played here. For one thing, there was no electricity. For another thing, it was essentially for dancers. It was in the dance hall, closed off. Courting is going on. People are paying attention to the music only to dance to. Here, as Dewey pointed out, what's happening? Well, people are listening, people are watching, people are gathered in a remarkably different way. And, so, musicians will obviously renegotiate what they're playing. This is an example of what Ralph Rentschler recorded the Balfa brothers playing in 1964, a song called Parlez-Nous a Boire. [ Music ] So, what happens if you're -- if you're young, a member of [inaudible], and you're playing in front of a crowd that looks more like that festival crowd? What will you come up with? Well, this is what Chris Stafford and [inaudible] came up with. [ Music ] Now, you know, that probably upsets the sensibilities of some people who think of Cajun music as historically traditional. But I'm here to tell you from my observations in Louisiana, if you don't do that, then it's stuck in a preservation hall. It's dead. You may not always like it. Dewey Balfa famously said of these kinds of matters, he said, I don't like what they're doing, but I sure am glad they're doing it, which I thought an absolutely brilliant observation. Some of the stuff that people do are designed to produce arouse from a crowd. [ Music ] You can hear -- [ Music ] In the opening of that version of the Bosco Stomp, he's letting the crowd have a chance to cheer and get into it. People started doing all sorts of reimagined songs. Style was shifting within a traditional repertoire. People like Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, would do things like four-part harmonies on old classics. [ Music ] And something about it works. Rearrange openings for crowd effect, stringing together two or more traditional tunes to produce medleys, rearrange songs for obvious dramatic effect. These strategies have influenced subsequent generations as is evident in the arrangements of many contemporary Cajun groups. Eventually, fiddler David Greely learned to play a swamp pop saxophone to accompany accordionist Steve Riley's forays into zydeco and swap pop. People -- things were changing even faster than some festival organizers were expecting. When Steve Riley, who was sort of our, you know, hope for the future, stuck in the past kind of guy, imitating the past, heir to Dewey Balfa, except actually, he ended up being heir to do it because he continued to think about as Dewey did. When he -- in 1994 he pulled a big, red, chromatic accordion out of the bag on stage at our festival. The south Louisiana crowd experienced a moment, not unlike the one experienced by the Newport Folk Festival in '65 when Dylan began to play Maggie's Farm. But, as Bruce Jackson has pointed out, that crowd in '65 in Newport was not mad at Dylan. They were mad at Peter Yarrow for trying to get him off. They were actually loving it. When festival producers heard the new licks, there was some consternation and concern that the traditional Cajun music's fair-haired band was sliding toward the progressive side. What was undeniable was, that the crowd loved it. A remarkable exchange of e-mails I had with Greely and Ben, manager and bassist Peter Schwartz, demonstrated that band members were keenly aware of these issues, as well as the effects of changing context, audience expectations at home and on the road, and the tensions between artistic and cultural integrity. So -- What happens? It continues, and people continue to experiment producing new songs, some of them that take on the audience, issues of cultural and natural and linguistic erosion. Listen to the first words. [ Music ] And this is Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys' typical opening song at outdoor concerts. It's called Danser san comprendre, Dancing Without Understanding. [ Music ] Why am I sing -- [ Speaking Foreign Language ] In a language you don't understand? Why am I singing in a language you don't understand? And he goes on to say, you know, say [speaking foreign language]. It's not enough to dance without understanding. You've got to fully engage. I mean, they were taking on the crowd saying, you know, yeah, that's fine. You all are dancing and pretending to love this stuff, but it takes more. You've got engage more. And there were other things that, you know, toyed with what was going on. [ Music ] Why not? Some, including poet, [inaudible] explored possibilities, including Cajun hip-hop and neo-metal. Others, Ann Savoy, Jane Vadrene [assumed spelling], Megan Brown, Kelli Jones, Savoy elected to explore in other directions. [ Music ] That's an old song from -- there I am again. That's an old song from the Lomax collection. And, obviously, recycled and rethought and regenerated. But they all continue to produce music that is playful and thoughtful and challenging, as we expect young music to be. At the same time, it's as respectful and grounded as I hope it would be. Young Cajun music is a perfect example of what Dewey Balfa meant when he said he wanted to preserve not the music itself, but the process that produces the music, so that musicians will continue to innovate and improvise new forms that both surprise us and reassure us at the same time. And this brings us back to Henry Glassie. This an obviously ongoing process, undoubtedly influenced by the past, but not trapped in it. In the spirit of Glassie's definition of tradition, as quote, the creation of the future out of the past. Dewey Balfa also said, a culture is preserved one generation at a time. Cajun and Creole cultures have endured in their own terms into the present generation, what happens in the next will continue to decide their futures. They have remarkable filtering systems. Once again, it is critically important to consider the context, especially those who consume all this cultural activity. How long will young Cajun and Creole bands play what they play without some sort of crowd to play for? Turning the fieldwork gaze toward the crowds exposes a simple truth, what works doggedly it endures, and what doesn't work fades mercifully away. Yet Dewey, who learned about cultural activism from the intellectual descendants of Alan Lomax and Charles Seeger, realize that we should not leave such things entirely to the laws of natural selection, and urge that we water the roots so that the tree might have a chance to live. Despite the admittedly activist perspective that we share, we both know you can't force the passage of tradition on anyone. What I have tried to do is to observe it, understand it as well as I can, and present the results of that understanding in as many ways as I can -- I can think of, including academic reporting, media presentation, public presentation. In that public presentation I have tried to make it attractive and available, and then step back and watch what happens, and then try to understand that. And folklore and fieldwork continue to be the best ways to understand this process that evolves at the speed of life. Thank you. [ Applause ] Sorry. Sorry, that was a little long. But we have maybe a little time for questions? [ Inaudible ] Yeah, sure. Uh-huh? [ Inaudible ] [ Laughter ] [ Inaudible ] We don't pass people along. [ Inaudible ] But, yeah, and you know, sometimes, you know, musicians who are aware of this have challenged the fourth wall. I remember back in 1980 something, Rockin Dopsie had a 50-foot cord. We were always wondering, why does he have a 50-foot cord? And in the first song he stepped back and took off and jumped into the crowd and played. It was like -- and this was like before mosh pits, right? So, I think the -- to me, the most important thing to take, one of the most important things to take out of -- out of all of this is, that it's a mistake to confuse history and tradition. You know, history is what happened in the past, and tradition is what came from it, but is still going on, and it's still happening and it's producing what we're experiencing today. And, in that regard, it has -- it has a quality of the present and even the future. And sometimes it surprises us in ways that we kind of wish we weren't surprised, but too bad, you know. We're not cultural policeman, and we shouldn't be. Yes? [ Inaudible ] Well, in the words of Mark Savoir, [inaudible], and a musician from south Louisiana, one begins with a C and the other begins with a Z [laughter]. There are some tendencies, and, you know, you could probably tease them out toward the edges, but there's so much common ground in the middle that I don't know why -- I'm not sure it's all that useful. Zydeco is proudly the product of the Creole community, the African Creole community of Louisiana, and Cajun music is the product of the French Acadian community, but they owe so much to each other, and they've inter -- they've interlaced in so many ways and influenced each other in so many ways that -- and that is what's wonderful about it. It would be kind of like -- it would be kind of like trying to analyze a gumbo [laughter]. You know, yeah, there's flour and oil and onions and chicken and garlic, but it's better just to eat the gumbo. [ Inaudible ] Of what? [ Inaudible ] Hippy Ti Yo. For a long time people -- well, there are a lot of words like this, like zydeco itself, right? People thought, well, that's the [inaudible] in French. Except the problem is, that the way it's used, [speaking foreign language], what, are you going to string bean all night? No. So, it's not a noun, it's the verb. And, you know, without going into a long explanation, if you look to France [inaudible]. Where's the other place this stuff came from? West Africa. And there, that term, seems to be closely associated to dancing and courtship rituals. [ Inaudible ] A lot of people thought it was [inaudible] the term tie yo, which is the Cajun French word for a hound dog. They thought it was about two [inaudible] hound dogs, [speaking foreign language], they stole my sled, except that doesn't make a lot of sense either. Well, how would dogs be stealing a sled, and why would they? Well, it turns out that hippy ti yo, the whole term, and don't carve out the ti yo part, hippy ti yo is what Cajuns heard cowboys from Texas yelling when they were herding cattle, as in yippi yi yo ca yea gallop [inaudible]. That makes a lot more sense, those bums from Texas were stealing our sled [inaudible] dogs. But sometimes when you point out these things that you're discovering through, you know, linguistic analysis, it makes the people nervous. No, no, I want my beans, I want my dogs [laughter]. Sometimes knowledge is inconvenient [laughter]. >> [Inaudible] questions? >> Billy Jean Ancelet: Yeah, yeah, sure, as many as you like. Yes? [ Inaudible ] I have had a blast. [ Inaudible ] What's that? [ Inaudible ] Yeah? [ Inaudible ] Yeah. >> Do you know why? >> Billy Jean Ancelet: Well, [inaudible]. There are different places to play. That erosion of the traditional, historical dance hall began when restaurants started programming [inaudible] along with, you know, [inaudible] and started making spaces in their restaurants. So, and more restaurants were regularly [inaudible]. So, dance halls started [inaudible]. But, you know, nobody -- there aren't any house dances anymore either. [ Inaudible ] Yes, yeah? [ Inaudible ] And sometimes that stuff is surprising, which is good. I often say that when the process that I was just describing is really in stride and hitting on all eight cylinders, it's working well, it produces things that both surprise us and reassure us in the same moment. We say, wow, I didn't see that coming, but I see where it came from. >> One more question. >> Billy Jean Ancelet: Okay. [ Inaudible ] [ Laughter ] I could tell you, but -- no, there are people who -- [ Inaudible ] And by the way, we just last year, just this past year we revisited something that we had done in the '80s, and that is we did an exhibition, a museum exhibition of traditional instruments made in south Louisiana. [ Inaudible ] Steel guitars, drums, percussion bands, violins, [inaudible]. So, if you want -- if you want to play that badly [inaudible]. >> We probably should wrap this up. But I wanted to thank Professor Ancelet for coming and for [inaudible]. [ Applause ]