Zydeco music in New Orleans is practically patriotic, and boy did it sound FANTASTIC last Sunday night at
Tipitina's. If you want to get the flavor, go out to the Cajun Fais Do-Do "most Sundays" featuring
Bruce Daigrepont. It's so casual, you can wear your sweats if you want, no kidding, and dance for hours with the most easygoing people on the planet. We didn't know the two-step (and frankly we still don't after trying while doubled over laughing at our amazing left-footedness). Folks there will be happy to attempt to teach you anyway though. A few people brought their own washboards and just stood below the stage playing along with the music. They had a birthday announcement and cake for some of the regulars at the break, and everybody kept dancing to the intermission music (which was more good zydeco and Cajun music, of course). As always, presiding over the festivities in spirit was the legendary Professor Longhair, imortalized in the giant mural overlooking the stage. What we want to know is, do all the real people live in New Orleans?
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2 comments:
The real people are at Tipitina's, all right, doing it just as you described. Real people are everywhere: at the Jazz Fest, at Mardi Gras, at Tipitina's, giving tours, cheering at games, waiting on you in the stores, driving the streetcars.
I'm a tour guide and buggy driver in the Quarter. I lived here till I was 25, worked at chemical plants for 35 years, and retired here in 2002. Of course, there are real people and good people everywhere. Here, they celebrate real with a fervent intensity. It goes back to the earliest French settlers, who absorbed every ethnic wave that followed. I am being re-absorbed myself.
Americans who are coming here to stay, expatriates and brand new folk, respect what we have here. The spirit survives, and will survive. Good times are the rule -- laissez le bon temps roullez!
Yes, you are capturing the authenticity here so beautifully...fun, yes, a party, absolutely, but you also prove the point that the people here are wise and free - once you've experienced this community, it's pretty impossible to go back to living without it.
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