Customer Reviews

Cajun Music: The Essential Collection

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Well, it is about time that I started to review some of the work of the good old boys and girls from the bayous down in Cajun country. Places like Lafayette and Lake Charles evoke memories of time and place in Cajun musical history. You know at the edges of the places where the likes of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis learned their crafts. And places where all kinds of mixes of music and races blended to form unique sounds all their own. Accordions, washboards, fiddles, guitars and what ever came to hand on those whiskey-drenched Saturday nights.

And on those nights come names like Clifton Chenier and Booboo Chavis that form the black influenced strand of the music. The Hackberry Ramblers and the likes of Waylon Thibodeaux form another, the good old white boys. French Acadian exiles, English "swamp foxes" of undetermined origin, black escaped slaves, "poor white trash"- it is all there mixed in one form or another. For the most part there were no serious conscious attempts to mix the strands but how could the intermixing influences be avoided in that small isolated area of southwest Louisiana. And all under the umbrella of what I call the "French blues". Get your dancing slippers on.

Rounder Records is almost invariably a great source for virtually every form of American roots music and for those who are unfamiliar with Cajun music this is your primer. Moreover Rounder, as usual, provides copious liner notes to give detailed information about the Cajun traditions, the various influences on this genre and the genesis of the performers. There are pure instrumentals featuring the ubiquitous fiddle, Creole classics, accordion masterpieces and French patois vocals. I note especially Jo-El Sonnier's "Pine Grove Blues", and "Evangeline Express", Zachary Richard's virtual Cajun anthem "Jolie Blon" and the modern Cajun band BeauSoliel on "Madame Bozo".

A really "toe tapping" CD. Makes you want to get up and dance! Mostly songs in French, but a good overview of the cajun style from various artist. Highly recommended as a starter for a cajun collection.

One of the best Cajun music CDs that i've ever heard. I would recommend this cd to anyone who likes Cajun music. It's a very good collection of Cajun music done very well.

This is a great compilation of songs. It's (so far) the one and only CD I have ever bought of Cajun music, so I have nothing else to compare it to for this genre. And at first I was unimpressed, (ignorant for sure) as all I heard was a lot of fiddle and accordion, having never paid much attention to either in the past. But after two or three times listening I was enchanted. The fiddle, the accordion (a 180, eh?) the language, the emotion, the history, the place itself, it's all here in this music - a place and a feeling you'll never forget.