Features
A P R I L 2 02 1 30
TAKE
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BACK TO FESTIVAL
M O U S G U M B O // 3 7
MOUNTAIN
// 3 4
BIKING
TALKING IN
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MANNERS, TRAVEL, AND
SWAMPLANDS
A DV E N T U R E CUISINE OVER
A WORLD-FA-
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TA K E M E B A C K
Tu Parles Ma Langue REFLECTING ON THE INTRICATE CULTURAL EXCHANGE FOSTERED BY FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DE LOUISIANE Story by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot • Photos by Paul Kieu
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A P R 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
s Louisiana enters yet another scaled down festival season due to the spread of COVID-19, I wanted to reflect on one of my favorites. In 2019, I spent three days interviewing Francophone musicians performing at Festival International de Louisiane, with the intention to profile them to publish the following spring in a story anticipating 2020’s festival. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned. Revisiting those interviews in 2021, a year into this global pandemic, I discovered that this was more than a story about Festival. My conversations with these four artists—a rock and roll Haitian Voodoo Priestess, a bearded librettist of the world’s first Acadian rock opera, a French piper in a kilt, and a New Orleans pop singer who learned French from her Cajun grandfather—revealed instead a story of profound cultural connection spanning continents, histories, and even languages. For almost thirty four years now, Lafayette’s annual April congregation of cultures has facilitated one of the world’s most remarkable global exchanges in the name of art and music. An incomparable feat of perfectlycoordinated serendipity, celebration, and connection—the energy of “Festival” is nothing short of quixotic. I’ve attended every year since I was seventeen, where—feeling very hip and cool in my floor-length skirt and crop top—I heard Trombone Shorty
live for the first time and found myself swaying along to the idiomatic “Tuku” music of the Zimbabwean musical legend Oliver Mtukudzi. In the years to follow I’d laugh with friends as we tried to imitate the mesmerizing way Imam Baildi’s lead singer gyrated her hips to alternative Greek rhythms; I’d follow a stilt man through the streets in search of a crawfish boat; I’d pay tribute to local legends Marc Broussard, Steve Riley, the Givers, and Tank and the Bangas; I’d witness African drumming and Irish stepdancing and the Balkan Beat Box. And I’d do a ton of two stepping. Festival International has always been about sharing such diverse perspectives through art. After a year of necessarily turning inward—into our homes, into our communities—the dazzling exchange that takes place in Downtown Lafayette each April recalls as all the more transcendent. More than that, it is valuable. This year, with caution and restrictions still in place, organizers have promised to build on the momentum of 2020’s Virtual Fest with a slew of livestreamed and archival virtual programming, combined with a schedule of safely-coordinated live and immersive experiences in Downtown Lafayette. The theme is commUNITY, a reminder that to best share our heritage and our home, we must take pride in it. We must preserve and protect it. And next year, we’ll meet our friends again on Jefferson, with plenty of new stories to tell.
These days, Serge Brideau works in a nursing home on the Acadian Peninsula, playing classics on his guitar for dementia patients, many who have no awareness of the pandemic that has temporarily halted his musical career. But two years ago, the Vikingesque frontman of New Brunswick’s Les Hotesses d’Hilaire sat across from
me in the lobby at the Holiday Inn in Lafayette, rubbing his eyes and nursing a hangover. “You know, we’ve been playing together for ten years, touring all over the world,” he said. “I don’t know how many shows we’ve played, probably something like nine hundred. And I’d have to say my favorite show was at the
