alan lomax, cajun/zydeco museum

Lots of folks have been mourning the loss of Alan Lomax, one of the great figures of American music. But in all the obits, I haven’t seen much mention of his role in popularizing Cajun and zydeco music.
His role was smaller in Cajun music than in zydeco, since Cajun music was already being recorded in the 1920s (first by Joe and Cleoma Falcon on Columbia Records in 1928). Some black Creole musicians were recorded in the 1930s, but Lomax and his father really birthed recorded zydeco in the late ’30s.
Among their accomplishments: the first recording of zydeco’s signature song, “Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales.” (The phrase means “the snap beans aren’t salty” — a statement of poverty, since it meant you couldn’t afford salted beef to put in your stew. You just had beans. The word “zydeco” is a bastardization of “les haricots,” pronounced lez-ah-ree-co.) More info for those interested in Michael Tisserand’s excellent The Kingdom of Zydeco.
There was a brief period in 2000 when I was considering quitting journalism for a couple of years, moving back to Rayne, and starting a Cajun/zydeco music museum. Rayne has as strong a claim as anyplace to being the birthplace of Cajun music; Joe and Cleoma Falcon were from Rayne, for instance, along with big names like Belton Richard, Amedee Breaux, Lionel Cormier, and Happy Fats LeBlanc. LeBlanc’s band, the Rayne-Bo Ramblers, was the first Cajun act to be broadcast on national network radio.
One problem: there already is a Cajun Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which I finally visited when I was in Louisiana earlier this month. But it’s deeply unimpressive. There’s clearly no one with museum experience involved; there’s no signage, no music (!), and the displays are little more than shelves of old accordians and 78s. The “hall of fame” is a series of poorly framed photos, with a sheet of white typing paper taped to the wall underneath each one.
It’s an admirable but limited all-volunteer effort — interesting to look at, but not particularly instructive. More a hobbyist’s attic than a museum, really. The volunteer the day I went (the widow of Austin Pitre) said they get four or five visitors a day.
And it’s in Eunice, which while a nice little prairie Cajun town, is in the middle of nowhere — an hour’s drive over bad roads from Lafayette, where all the tourists stay. (Rayne’s about 15 minutes from Lafayette, right on Interstate 10.)
Plus, the Eunice museum suffers from the age-old divide between Cajun [i.e., white] and zydeco [black] musicians. There’s no zydeco here, and only the slightest evidence that black people had any role in Cajun music. (There really isn’t a good zydeco museum anywhere, to my knowledge, even in Opelousas, the town that would make the most sense.)
So there’s plenty of room for a well-done Cajun/zydeco museum. Tourists would come. I already had my first two exhibits planned out in my mind. First would be a permanent exhibit comparing Cajun and zydeco music to its influences — Nova Scotian ballads, German polka, French chansons, West African rhythms, R&B, Native American songs. And the first temporary exhibit would be on the early duo of Amedee Ardoin and Dennis McGee — the first and most important pairing of black and white musicians in south Louisiana. The exhibit would conclude with Ardoin’s beating at the hands of a white mob and eventual death. (Okay, that might have been a little heavy for the first exhibit.)
In the end, I took another journalism job and put my plans on hold. But I’d still love to get it done, if I could find a couple donors willing to preserve south Louisiana culture and part with a little dough. (Wealthy crabwalk.com readers take note! Wouldn’t you like your name on a nice big plaque in the lobby? It can be yours for only a few tens of thousands of dollars!)