Customer Reviews

Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anyone unfamiliar with Cajun or Creole music, Blair Kilpatrick's autobiographical journey into the world of Cajun-Creole music via the diatonic accordion begs the question : why should something so anecdotal possibly appeal to a wider public, going beyond restricted circles of Cajun Creole music and accordion fanatics ?

Maybe because this shared personal and heartfelt autobiographical account may help reveal better how we the readers relate to and act upon our own passions and limitations : musical or otherwise. It helped me do just that.

The author ( a practicing professional psychologist ) details stages of fascination with the music, learning of the instrument, fear of public performance, and the knowledge, skills and insights gained from her mentor and acceptance into the Cajun Creole music community, and much more.

I found it thoroughly entertaining, engaging and extremely well-written. The quality of writing is impressive and is in itself worth the hardcover price.

I would have given it 5 stars, but feel perhaps the amount of detail given to the mentor's declining health and eventual passing gave the book a slight imbalance and sense of impending doom towards the end, though he is an extremely important part of understanding the whole process she had gone through.

Overall, a beautifully written and beautifully produced book, with a lovely dose of feminine charm and valuable insights into Cajun Music and Culture. Anyone who loves quality writing, roots music, hot food, accordions and community based music are sure to enjoy it.

I loved this book! I initially opened Accordion Dreams: A Journey Into Cajun and Creole Music with the expectation of being mildly entertained while learning about a genre of music with which I was wholly unfamiliar. I was surprised when I found my reading stretching into the early morning hours, a measure of the author's skilled writing and the interesting subject matter.

I heartily recommend Accordion Dreams for anyone who has felt & dismissed a nascent, seemingly peripheral interest; this book will encourage you to pick up your accordion and play and dance.

Blair Kilpatrick's honest, touching and at-times comical memoir describing her foray into the Cajun and Creole music world as an adult is as lyrical and moving as the two-steps and waltzes she learned to sing throughout her journey. A self-described shy Midwesterner, Blair was turned on to Cajun music after a brief visit to New Orleans in the 1990s. Beyond the bright gaudy lights of Bourbon Street, she was drawn, like many, to the subtle sounds of the fiddle and the rhythmic groan of the accordion during an unexpected Swamp Tour. Blair began to frequent Acadiana on subsequent trips to Louisiana and delved deeper and deeper into the music that almost immediately moved her. She describes this experience as if she were instantly smitten and punch-drunk on Cajun sounds. Her story takes on mythical proportions as she meets her elder guide in Papa Joe, portends her future in dreams of playing the accordion, falls into the belly of the whale of self-doubt, finds an archetypal mentor in Danny Poullard and emerges from the dark swamp of self-doubt with an epic story to tell marked with gems of wisdom (Music is the child of your heart) and inspiration. She writes, "Cajun Music seemed to echo the very things I was feeling: sadness, loneliness, a desire to cry out in frustration and anger...You begin to feel lighter because the pain inside you has been drawn out, an now other voices, stronger voices, are helping you speak it."

Perhaps Blair's story is archetypical. Many players who have grown up outside the Cajun and Creole culture and were called to venture "inside" of it are among the strongest heroes and spokespersons (Anne Savoy, Charlie and Lynne Terr, Tracy Schwartz, Dirk Powell, Kevin Wimmer). They learn a deep appreciation for the music and the intense processes of learning with all the inherent joys and struggles. They begin their journeys as students and, always with a passionate nod to learning, become heroes and mentors to students of their own.

As part of the vibrant Cajun and Creole music scene of the San Francisco Bay Area, Blair finds community, family, love and a safe and comforting place to push her own boundaries, to let go and loose herself in the "rhythm lock".

[...]

I was lured into Blair Kilpatrick's memoir, Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music, the moment I saw the charming cover depicting a happy little girl holding her accordion, although I was surprisingly unprepared for the extent of the adventure she'd lead me on in this extraordinary musical memoir.

Before I even opened the book, a small voice in the recesses of my mind encouraged me to find my BeauSoleil album, Bayou Cadillac, which I hadn't listened to for ages. Find it I did, and as the first beats of Bon Temps Rouler resounded, I settled back in a comfortable chair and darn near didn't get up until I'd read this entire, enchanting book.

To my delight, within the first dozen pages, Kilpatrick talked about how she had excitedly ripped the plastic from her newly purchased BeauSoleil cassette, which shows off the battered red Cadillac convertible, upended in a swamp. Now the hook in me worked itself deeper and deeper. Her compelling, obsessive journey into Cajun-Creole music progressed with her quest to learn to play the accordion, and pay it well, after she fell in love with all things relating to Louisiana's famous folksingers and musicians, whose French lyrics tell stories through song and melodies merge souls through accordion, fiddle, guitar, and triangle.

In, what I consider a love story, Kilpatrick shares the secrets she learned from the fathers of this genre from learning to play "by ear" to knowing you must practice a tune 100,000 times, if you want to succeed. From her illuminating prose, I now understood more of the nuances of this music I love. I learned to hear the fiddles talk in their call-and-response style and to feel the easy contracting and expanding bellows of the accordions, as those who played their pearly keys lead the tunes. Moreover, the commanding personalities of the giants of Cajun-Creole music came to life as Kilpatrick peeled back the layers of developing friendships with her friendly, though passionate, conversational style of writing.

Kilpatrick had me "vibrating in some kind of universal rhythm lock" by the end of the book; and by then, too, I wanted to play in her band, Sauce Piquante, even though I know how to play not a one of those beckoning instruments. She has a way of expressing in writing exactly what I think I'd feel if I had been so fortunate as to have taken this journey into the heart of Cajun-Creole music.

She even includes a `mother memoir' within her Accordion Dreams memoir, when in chapter fifteen she gives us a look at the women in her Eastern European family, as her "mother laughed and cried as the memories came back." For me, that's the beauty of writing `mother memoir' because you can't help but be taken back to your beginnings, just as Kilpatrick couldn't help but be taken back to the roots of Cajun music. "And you find yourself back at the beginning, at the place where you began."

I fell in love completely with the "laughter and tears, love and loss. Holding on and letting go. The mysterious dance of memory linking past and present - and carrying us forward, into the days ahead." The resonance of Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music will stay with me for a lifetime.

I purchased this book at one of the last author lunch forum's at Stacey's bookstore in San Francisco. (It has closed due to the economy). Blair read a portion of her book, then her and her husband played a couple of songs. It was very entertaining.

The book itself was better than I expected. It is a very personnel story about learning to play the accordion, life, love, relationships and family. Plus music and Louisiana! The story gives a very good description of how a musician learns to play an instrument, and all the quirks in life that happen along the way.

I hope this new author decides to write another book!

As a composer, and student of anthropology and ethnomusicology, I was interested to see what this book had to offer. It was rather interesting in the beginning, learning about different accordions, Cajun styles and musicians, and watching how her musical teachers taught her. However, this book sets a certain pace, with particular kinds of events and a dry writing style, and never veers from this. So, as a story, it gets pretty bland being that nothing really happens.