This program contains an Hour of Music with the Cajun Music Icons Beausoliel. This performance was recorded live in August of 2004, at the Conference Center in Telluride, Colorado's Mountain Village.
This show also has an interview with Beausoliel's founding member, Michael Doucet by Southwest Stages' host John Strader.
BEAUSOLEIL avec Michael Doucet "We Cajuns really are the gypsies of America,” says BeauSoleil’s Michael Doucet. The former university musicologist, National Heritage Award recipient and leader of the world’s best known Cajun outfit is referring to his band’s latest disc, Gitane Cajun (Cajun Gypsy). “The Acadiennes, or Cajuns, came to the New World from France in 1604,” says the fiddler.
“We settled the land of what is now called Nova Scotia—we called it L'Acadie—and built peaceful, friendly relationships with the native Micmac people. That's why the British Empire grabbed our rich farmlands after the French and Indian Wars and drove our ancestors out.
In 1755, fifteen thousand Acadians were expelled, and at least seven thousand died on the long journey that brought most of them to a new home in Louisiana. We got moved around a lot.
Because of that we Cajuns have a gypsy consciousness. The family stays together no matter what! And we also kept our music despite all our being shoved about and uprooted.
"About ninety-eight percent of BeauSoleil's music is sung in French, but it's not the music that you'd hear in France. The Cajuns mixed it up socially and musically with all sorts of folks along their journeys and after they dug in down in Louisiana.
There's a strong Spanish influence in there—Spain used to own Louisiana—and there are Irish and Scottish and German and very important African-American and Caribbean flavors and styles blended into our music. What I really believe about Cajun music is that is the most American music there is.
We play music that people feel like they've heard before, like it brings up memories they didn't know they had."
Such poetic explications are not unexpected from Doucet, who has been nicknamed "the Mystic Cajun" and whose Zen-like grasp of blues, jazzy swing, and old time music gives BeauSoleil its special appeal.
Doucet recounts how he started out as a disgruntled graduate student in Louisiana bent on refuting a professor's curt dismissal of Cajun music as "chanky-chanky and second-rate country and western." His academic research, eventually funded by foundation grants, led him to meet and learn from the great elders of Louisiana music—Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee, Clifton Chenier and Canray Fontenot, among them.
Doucet put what he learned into practice. In 1973 he formed an "exotic" duo in France with his cousin, now known worldwide as Zachary Richard. ("He was Ralph Richard back then," sniffs Doucet, good-naturedly.)
Doucet returned to America and in 1976, with his guitarist brother, David Doucet, he formed BeauSoleil. The rest is history.
BeauSoleil has gone through personnel changes over the years, appeared in films and on soundtracks, and morphed from a calypso-flavor to a rock-edge. But the band has always kept its sound Cajun heartbeat, even when that heart pounds fast to a zydeco beat, as it often does.
"The line between zydeco and Cajun music is really pretty blurred these days," Doucet explains. "Really, people just want to have fun and they dance to what feels good."
Present-day BeauSoleil is a band of seasoned virtuosos firmly adhering to their Cajun folk roots, most often acoustically expressed, though this does not rule out experimentation and innovation.
After 30 years in the band, Doucet's songwriting has grown more complex and universal. "There really can't be any imposed parameters on this music.
You need to do what you want to do, and what we gain from our audiences is at least as much as whatever we give to them. It's all about touching people and being touched by people. My two favorite venues are festivals and somebody's kitchen."

Sept. 2005-Interview by Bill Nevins

This program contains an Hour of Music with the Cajun Music Icons Beausoliel. This performance was recorded live in August of 2004, at the Conference Center in Telluride, Colorado's Mountain Village.
This show also has an interview with Beausoliel's founding member, Michael Doucet by Southwest Stages' host John Strader.
BEAUSOLEIL avec Michael Doucet "We Cajuns really are the gypsies of America,” says BeauSoleil’s Michael Doucet. The former university musicologist, National Heritage Award recipient and leader of the world’s best known Cajun outfit is referring to his band’s latest disc, Gitane Cajun (Cajun Gypsy). “The Acadiennes, or Cajuns, came to the New World from France in 1604,” says the fiddler.
“We settled the land of what is now called Nova Scotia—we called it L'Acadie—and built peaceful, friendly relationships with the native Micmac people. That's why the British Empire grabbed our rich farmlands after the French and Indian Wars and drove our ancestors out.
In 1755, fifteen thousand Acadians were expelled, and at least seven thousand died on the long journey that brought most of them to a new home in Louisiana. We got moved around a lot.
Because of that we Cajuns have a gypsy consciousness. The family stays together no matter what! And we also kept our music despite all our being shoved about and uprooted.
"About ninety-eight percent of BeauSoleil's music is sung in French, but it's not the music that you'd hear in France. The Cajuns mixed it up socially and musically with all sorts of folks along their journeys and after they dug in down in Louisiana.
There's a strong Spanish influence in there—Spain used to own Louisiana—and there are Irish and Scottish and German and very important African-American and Caribbean flavors and styles blended into our music. What I really believe about Cajun music is that is the most American music there is.
We play music that people feel like they've heard before, like it brings up memories they didn't know they had."
Such poetic explications are not unexpected from Doucet, who has been nicknamed "the Mystic Cajun" and whose Zen-like grasp of blues, jazzy swing, and old time music gives BeauSoleil its special appeal.
Doucet recounts how he started out as a disgruntled graduate student in Louisiana bent on refuting a professor's curt dismissal of Cajun music as "chanky-chanky and second-rate country and western." His academic research, eventually funded by foundation grants, led him to meet and learn from the great elders of Louisiana music—Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee, Clifton Chenier and Canray Fontenot, among them.
Doucet put what he learned into practice. In 1973 he formed an "exotic" duo in France with his cousin, now known worldwide as Zachary Richard. ("He was Ralph Richard back then," sniffs Doucet, good-naturedly.)
Doucet returned to America and in 1976, with his guitarist brother, David Doucet, he formed BeauSoleil. The rest is history.
BeauSoleil has gone through personnel changes over the years, appeared in films and on soundtracks, and morphed from a calypso-flavor to a rock-edge. But the band has always kept its sound Cajun heartbeat, even when that heart pounds fast to a zydeco beat, as it often does.
"The line between zydeco and Cajun music is really pretty blurred these days," Doucet explains. "Really, people just want to have fun and they dance to what feels good."
Present-day BeauSoleil is a band of seasoned virtuosos firmly adhering to their Cajun folk roots, most often acoustically expressed, though this does not rule out experimentation and innovation.
After 30 years in the band, Doucet's songwriting has grown more complex and universal. "There really can't be any imposed parameters on this music.
You need to do what you want to do, and what we gain from our audiences is at least as much as whatever we give to them. It's all about touching people and being touched by people. My two favorite venues are festivals and somebody's kitchen."

Sept. 2005-Interview by Bill Nevins