Grant enables University of Louisiana to promote festival anniversary

The University of Louisiana will help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, set for Oct. 10–12 in Girard Park, adjacent to campus. The event features music on multiple stages throughout the park, food and crafts.

UL has received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to create an art exhibit, educational conference and commemorative music CD in conjunction with Festivals. The exhibit and conference will be free and open to the public.

In 1974, the first Tribute to Cajun Music was held in the University's Blackham Coliseum. The event, which evolved into Festivals, was organized by the late Dewey Balfa, a well-known Cajun fiddler and vocalist, and Dr. Barry Ancelet, a folklorist and scholar who is now head of the University's Department of Modern Languages.

The University's festival-related events will feature two other significant anniversaries. In 1934, John and Alan Lomax, researchers for the Library of Congress, visited south Louisiana to record folk songs. In 1964, Balfa and others brought Cajun music to a national audience at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island.

The exhibit, which opens Sept. 19, will feature visual art and archival video footage from 40 years of Festivals and a catalog created by the UL Press. It will include photographs, paintings, posters, pins and T-shirt art by artists such as Elemore Morgan Jr., Megan Barra, Robert Dafford, Philip Gould and Francis X. Pavy.

It will be displayed in the A. Hays Town Building, part of the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum complex at 710 E. St. Mary Blvd.

Dr. Mark F. DeWitt, who holds the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Endowed Chair in Traditional Music at UL, said the conference will help educate the public about Acadiana's rich cultural heritage. DeWitt is the principal investigator of the NEA grant.

Ancelet and Dr. Nicholas "Nick" Spitzer, an anthropology professor at Tulane University, will give keynote addresses at the conference. Ancelet, who has written extensively about Cajun and Creole culture and music, will discuss the personal and historic links among Alan Lomax, Balfa and Rinzler, and their contributions to Festivals.

DeWitt said Spitzer will discuss "the ideas of cultural conservation, creolization and modernization that influenced Lomax and other folklorists and led to the creation of Festivals Acadiens et Creoles and other public presentations of traditional expressive culture in the '60s and '70s."

Spitzer is the producer and host of "American Routes", a weekly music program on National Public Radio.

A concert, inspired by the Lomaxes' 1934 field recordings, will be held at Angelle Hall in the evening after the conference.

In addition to these events, live acoustic performances will be held beneath a tent on the museum grounds during Festivals.

The music CD will be a joint production of University of Louisiana's Center for Louisiana Studies and Festivals. It will feature 10 songs from the 1934 Lomax field recordings, paired with recordings of those songs performed by contemporary artists at Festivals Acadiens et Creoles in past years.

The University has played an important role in promoting and preserving Cajun and Creole culture. The Center for Louisiana Studies, established in 1973, includes the UL Lafayette Press, which features works related to Louisiana. The Ernest J. Gaines Center opened its doors in 2010.

In 1974, Louisiana created the Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, which includes photographs and field recordings. In 2003, the University added the Cajun and Creole Music Collection of commercially recorded music.

The University's academic offerings also reflect its role as a keeper of the culture. It established a doctoral degree in Francophone Studies in 1994 and began offering a bachelor's degree in traditional music in 2012.

Louisiana.edu