Three day PEI Francophone festival has food, fun and lively music for all

Last night we were whiling our time on Victoria Row when friends went by and said a Cajun band was playing at the passenger terminal.

A Cajun band! Off we went to an excellent and fun but poorly promoted event. 

They show continues tonight at 7:30 pm at the renovated Charlottetown wharf – at the bottom of Weymouth Street.

We didn’t sample the Cajun and Acadian food since we were stuffed from eating at the Globe but it looked good and the price was fair.

When we arrived the fun was well underway with Le Group Swing from Ottawa. Two guys and a girl dished out heavy beats and jazzed up French Canadian and pop music.

Think Barachois done hip hop and Eurotrance – OK maybe not Eurotrance but definitely danceable. The boys and girl played it on the drole side with lots of fun mugging and acting out. The crowd loved them.

From young to old, the audience was shaking their booty to French dance music.

Apparently the girl who kept the beats going, danced and did break dancing on her head is not officially part of the group. They ought to think about that. She was a dynamo. A talented, dancing, good looking girl can help a band with 2 guys.

After their 2nd encore, my partner said she felt sorry for the band following Le Group Swing.

During the intermission, we met a couple from Lafayette Louisiana, the home town of Roddie Romero and the Hub City All Stars the next group. They introduced us to the keyboard player and talked about Cajun versus Zydeco.

Cajun is the traditional French country music based on fiddle and Cajun accordion. Zydeco is the more modern format of the same music, made popular by Clifton Chenier after World War II.

Usually a Zydeco accordion player will use a full keyboard accordion while a Cajun performer will use what looks like a handmade squeeze box, which it is. Cajun accordions are made by hand by instrument makers in Louisiana and have a distinctive twang.

Zydeco music is a full band with bass, lead guitar, drums and keyboard.

Roddie Romero and his band dished up Zydeco music for the first half of their set. The music was hot but the dancers took some time to get used to the steps. There’s a shuffle rhythm that can throw you off at first. Besides, people had danced themselves into exhaustion with Le Group Swing.

At the mid-point Roddie picked up his Falcon Cajun accordion and the band switched gears into Joe Leblon and other classic Cajun tunes.

Here’s the boys dusting ‘er up in Lafayette.

They were the best live Cajun band I’ve heard. My friends from Lafayette leaned across the table and said “Now you don’t need lessons. You seen how it’s done.”

More practice on the Cajun accordion before I can play like that for sure. I love to hear that music.

Tonight the fun begins again at 7:30 pm.

Two comments – the event is poorly promoted and the audience was half of what they could have accommodated. It has been the same every year.

Is it because there is too much government funding and organizers don’t feel compelled to make it pay? Or is the event meant for some inner circle of Acadians on PEI. Je ne sais pas.

Second, the building is an old shed and not treated for sound. They do that all the time in Charlottetown like having concerts in the cow barn at the Civic Centre. Lots of hard surfaces create ugly acoustic reflections. If venue owners want to have live music in a building, you have to treat the walls and ceilings for reflection and absorption.

OK a third – what is with Roddie Romero blocking embedding his YouTube video. Must be super star like Michael Jackson. Oh well, the fan videos are great. I get a real charge out of artists who do not want their videos embedded on web sites. Last time I checked the fans had figured out how important they are to an artists career.