CAJUN FRENCH MUSIC ASSOCIATION
CFMA is comprised of Cajuns and non-Cajuns whose purpose is to promote and preserve, not only Cajun music,
but also various aspects of the Acadian Heritage. The organization was founded in Basile, Louisiana in November
of 1984 with Harry LaFleur of Eunice as its founder. Since its beginning by less than 30 persons, it has grown to a
membership of approximately 2,000 families serving six Chapters in Louisiana and two Chapters in the Cajun
Region of Southeast Texas.
Most of the local members are grass roots Cajuns who want to preserve their heritage by teaching the
authentic Cajun language and the traditions of their Acadian ancestry. Chapters usually sponsor lessons
on how to play Cajun fiddle, accordion, guitar and dance lessons. Most Chapters offer classes on how
to speak Cajun French. Some members donate their time in classrooms to help teach pupils language and
other cultural aspects of Cajun culture. All Chapters sponsor local Cajun Music and Dance Festivals.
The National Governing Body is comprised of two board members from each Chapter and serve to regulate and oversee the constitutional and by-law guidelines. This body sponsors the "Le Cajun" National Cajun Music
Awards, held the 3rd weekend of August annually, in Lafayette, LA. In addition, the Governing Body sponsors many other National Projects in education, heritage, dance, monthly newsletters, etc.,
which are ongoing projects to preserve Cajun Culture.
The Cajun French Music Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of
Cajun music and culture. The CFMA consists of 6 Chapters in Louisiana & Texas.
CAJUN HISTORY: WORDS AND PHRASES
(Editor's Note: The preceding and following articles and biographies were excerpted from the
Cajun French Music Association web page.
Cajunism un sous-colline de terre (pronounced sue-loleen-day-tear)
Gombo vertes or gombo d'herbes (gumbo vehr or zeb)
Tournesol (tourn-sol)
Fleuri-d'eau (fleur-ee-doe)
Voilette (vol-let)
A small sailboat, a shrimp trawler. Louisiana's first shrimpers were powered by sails, called voiles.
Voler means "to fly or to use the wind".
Did you know that Louisiana waters are home to at least 9 species of shrimp? The one with the most interesting
name, "the seabob", was also unique in the shrimp industry. It was a specie that could easily be caught and dried in
commercial quantities. Seabobs were "schooling" shrimp; they occurred in large numbers close to the shoreline of
the Gulf. A shallow water shrimp, it seldom reached 4 inches in length, but its small uniform size (and abundance)
made it ideal for the dried shrimp industry. Cajun fishermen called the Seabob, "chevrette a sept barbe", "shrimp
with seven whiskers".
Actually, Seabobs have eleven whiskers, some more conspicuous than others, which gives it a
"bearded" appearance. Today, small brown shrimp have replaced the Seabob in the dried shrimp business.
Marmite (mar-meet)
Fricassee (free-kA-say)
Epouvantail (a-poo-vohn-tie)
Pierres de Savon (pee-air, sa-vohn)
Cajunism: chaque crapaud a sa crapaute (dra-poe, kra-paut)
The pirogue (pee-r-rogue) was not always the sleek fiberglass or plank and plywood boat of today. It antedates the
coming of the white man by more than a thousand years. The French and Spanish explorers were quick to
recognize the usefulness of this craft, which they obtained from the Indians.
American Indians were the pioneer pirogue builders in Louisiana, and some of their crafts
were huge and could accommodate thousands of pounds of cargo and many, many paddlers (people). These
boats (that we now call dugouts) were made with the aid of fire, built at the base of a cypress or
cottonwood tree, and stoked until the tree fell down. They then burned it off at the desired
length, and also used fire and crude scraping tools such as shells to "hollow" the log while
protecting vital parts with mud. Some were documented to have been up to 40 feet long and
6 feet wide, carved from giant cottonwood, which can attain a diameter of 7 feet.
The derivation of our word, pirogue, is as interesting as the origin of the craft. It comes from the Carib dialect and
translates into Spanish and French as piragua, which means "dug-out." The French are said to have brought the
name of this craft from the Caribbean to Canada, where it eventually found its way to Louisiana. Writer and
adventurer A.L. DuPratz called this a pettyaugre in his documentaries of 1718.
DEWEY BALFA
Balfa was born in 1927 to a large, musical family from Bayou Grand Louis near Mamou. His father, grandfather
and great-grandfather were all fiddlers, as was his older brother Will. Balfa began playing fiddle as a child, and as a
young man started a band with his brothers Will on fiddle and Harry, and later Rodney, on guitar. For material they
drew on a large treasury of songs learned from their father and also composed songs of their own. Many of their
songs, such as Pointe aux Pains, 'Tit Galop pour Mamou and Parlez nous Boire have become standards in the Cajun
repertoire. The Balfa Brothers became known for their compelling twin-fiddle sound and soulful vocals. They
supplemented their sound with accordion, playing with such greats as Nathan Abshire, Hadley Fontenot, Nonc Allie
Young and Marc Savoy. Like most Cajun musicians, the Balfas depended on music to supplement their incomes and
support their families. Dewey Balfa worked at various times as a farmer, insurance salesman, schoolbus driver, disc
jockey and furniture store owner.
In 1964 Balfa performed with Gladius Thibodeax and Louis "Vinesse" LeJeune at the Newport Folk Festival in
Rhode Island. They received a standing ovation from an audience of 17,000 people, most of whom had never heard
Cajun music before. Balfa returned to Louisiana convinced of the value of his culture and its music; for the rest of
his life he worked tirelessly to bring that conviction to his own people and Cajun music to audiences throughout
North America, Europe and Japan. He and his brothers recorded several classic albums of traditional Cajun music
for the Swallow and Rounder labels.
Balfa performed frequently through the 1960s and '70s with brothers Rodney and Will. After Rodney and Will were
killed in a tragic car accident in 1978, Dewey Balfa carried on the Balfa Brothers tradition with Rodney's son Tony
and other musicians. In 1982 Balfa received the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship,
the highest honor this country can bestow on a traditional artist. He died on June 17, 1992.
AMEDE ARDOIN
Little is known about Ardoin's life. He was born circa 1896 and his family moved to l'Anse Rougeau, between
Eunice and Mamou, when he was a child. A popular musician in the black community, Ardoin was also revered by
whites and frequently played white dances with Creole fiddlers Alphonse LaFleur and Douglas Bellard, as well as
with McGee and Cajun fiddlers Sadie Courville and Shelby Vidrine. Ardoin and McGee started playing together
around 1921 and worked throughout the southwest prairies, playing dances in Kaplan, Bayou Noir, Lake Charles
and many other towns. They made their first recordings together in New Orleans, where they recorded six songs in
December of 1929. They recorded a total of 16 more songs together in three sessions in 1930 and 1934. Ardoin's
final, and only solo recording session took place in December, 1934, in New York City, where he recorded a dozen
tunes.
Ardoin faded into obscurity in the late 1930's and for many years the date and cause of his death were unknown. It
was rumored that he was poisoned by a jealous fiddler. Those who knew him say that he was savagely beaten by a
group of strangers one night returning home from a dance and that this led to his mental and physical decline. It is
now known that he died at the Pineville State Hospital in Alexandria on November 4, 1941, of a common disease
untreatable at that time.
A half-century after his death, Ardoin remains one of the most important musicians in the history of southwest
Louisiana. Echoes of his distinctive accordion style and high, crying vocals are still heard in Cajun music. He was a
major influence on Cajun musicians such as Nathan Abshire, Austin Pitre and Iry LeJeune. Many of his songs, in
one form or another, remain standards in the Cajun repertoire.
A scoundrel and was probably from the phrase plus bas qu'une sous une colline de terre,
meaning "lower than someone under a hill of dirt.". A colline is a "hill", but is seldom used by Cajuns anymore. My late father referred to
drunkards, dead-beats, and crooked politicians as such.
"green gumbo" or "gumbo of legumes.". A winter dish that is a meal in itself. Spinach, mustard, and turnip tops are de-stemmed,
finely chopped, and added to a pot of simmering stew meat. Cuts of beef or pork such as brisket, neck or shoulder are browned then added to a soup,
seasoned with onions, garlic, salt, and pepper. The greens and meat are cooked to the consistency of a heavy sauce
and served over rice. Smoked ham or tasso can also be used, but greens boiled with cured meat are a different dish if
the soup is omitted.
Cajun for the "sun flower". Sol means "sun" and tourner means "to turn around" to face the
sun, as sunflowers do. From WYNK, Mick Abed
A unique term used by the people of Pierre Part in reference to the "high water marks";
left on trees and stumps after flood waters recede. Flourissant means "flowering" and since plants flower at their
"peak of seasonal growth," it was logical for Cajuns to make this analogy, to refer to the high water marks (the peak
of flooding) as "the flowering of the water". From Raymond Sedotal, Pierre Part
A small tin bucket with a wire handle and cover (about the size of a child's sand bucket) that
was used by Cajun women to send warm food to their men working in the sugar cane fields. Fifty years ago,
cultivating sugar cane was more laboring than it is today. Men left the house before daybreak so as to complete
most of their work before it got too hot. Because there was no electricity (lights) they usually didn't fix breakfast
before leaving. Later in the morning, the women cooked and sent their children to find their father and deliver his
meal in the food bucket. The marmite was a simple pail with no dividers so, grits or rice was put in first, then eggs,
sausage, chicken or meat was placed on top. Some of the better pails (that didn't rust) were of porcelain and said to
be en granite (ahn, gran-eet) of granite. Octogenarian Agathy Falgoust, from Vacherie, said she never threw out a
cup with a broken handle because it could be filled with gravy or beans, and it cradled nicely into the rice at the
bottom of the marmite. Note: In France, marmite is a cooking pot that we in Louisiana call a chaudire (sho-dee-air).
This is a stew. We believe this work comes from frire (to fry) and cass (kA-say, to break). We
"break" or interrupt the frying process (the browning of meat) when water is added to make a stew.
This is a scarecrow. Mitch Landry told us that a Creole musician said that his people called
a scarecrow un bon homme; and from the Vacherie - Choque Bay area we heard vieux bon homme which means
"very old man", and a bent over scarecrow in a field can certainly look like an old man.
Translates to "little rocks for soap". Cajuns who worked in the oil fields had
access to sodium hydroxide (caustic) which was easier to use than wood ashes to make soap. They boiled caustic
crystals with tallow to make country soap "savon du pays (sa-vohn, pay-ee)".
Contributed by Gilman Aguillard and Joy Ortego
Translates into "each toad has his toadette", and means "there's someone for everyone".
This saying is used in jest when referring to somebody whose looks, personality or eccentricities would seem to prevent them from attracting a mate. Yet, they do, in spite of all, find
someone just like they are - their own crapaute. Contributed by Rodney & Diana Thibodeaux
Dewey Balfa is remembered as a master fiddler, as a member of the Balfa Brothers Band and as a cultural crusader
who brought Cajun music to the schools of southwest Louisiana and to the rest of the world.
Amede Ardoin, a legendary black Creole accordionist and singer, helped lay the foundations for modern Cajun
music in a series of recordings made between 1929 and 1934 with the great Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee.
Please Sign Our
If you'd like to join The Cajun Connection, please email us today!
