BeauSoleil at the Colonial Feb. 24
Louisiana Band Cooks a Musical Gumbo
By: Colonial - Feb 09, 2012
Berkshire Theatre Group will transport its audiences down to New Orleans with a night of rollicking zydeco, jazz, Cajun, blues and country music performed by the award winning band, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet on February 24 at 8pm at The Colonial Theatre.
Founded in 1975, BeauSoleil released its first album in 1977 and became one of the most well-known bands performing traditional and original music rooted in the folk tunes of the creole and Cajun people of Louisiana. BeauSoleil tours extensively in the U.S. and internationally. While its repertoire includes hundreds of traditional Cajun and zydeco songs, BeauSoleil has also pushed past constraints of purely traditional instrumentation, rhythm and lyrics of Louisiana folk music, incorporating elements of rock-and-roll, jazz, blues, calypso and other genres in original compositions and re-workings of traditional tunes. BeauSoleil lyrics are sung in English or Cajun French (and sometimes both in one song).
Although Michael Doucet did not originally intend to pursue performing Cajun music, a turning point came when Doucet was awarded a Folk Arts Apprenticeship by the National Endowment for the Arts. "I had planned to go to graduate school in New Mexico to study the Romantic poets," he recalls on the Vanguard Records web site. "Instead I traded William Blake for Dewey Balfa." Doucet sought out every surviving Cajun musician, including Balfa, Dennis McGee, Sady Courville, Luderin Darbone, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, Freeman Fontenot and others. He studied their techniques and songs and encouraged some to resume public performances.
BeauSoleil has appeared on soundtracks for the films The Big Easy, Passion Fish and Belizaire the Cajun. The group plays at jazz and folk festivals and has appeared on numerous television shows, including CNN's Showbiz Today, Austin City Limits, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Emeril Live. BeauSoleil appears regularly on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio show. Keillor has even hailed the group as the "best Cajun band in the world". BeauSoleil has also performed in concert with Mary Chapin Carpenter and opened for the Grateful Dead.
BeauSoleil is one of a few groups performing traditional Louisiana music to win a Grammy Award. L'Amour Ou La Folie (Love Or Folly), recorded in 1996 and released on Rhino Records, earned the 1997 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album.
In a review on Amazon.com, Richard Gehr wrote, "By now the sextet transcends the dancehall, possessing the ability to transform nearly any traditional Cajun, Creole, or French tune into high art while preserving a clear sonic bloodline back to its roots." In 2005, BeauSoleil’s Gitane Cajun, released on Vanguard Records, earned the group its tenth Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Folk Album.
A reflection of its versatility is that BeauSoleil has also earned a Grammy nomination in the Contemporary Folk category, for the 1999 album Cajunization, with songs that effortlessly span Cajun, Calypso, French ballad, blues and other musical styles.
In 2005, BeauSoleil won the Big Easy Entertainment Award for Best Cajun Band, the tenth time the band was honored in the 18-year history of the awards presented by the New Orleans music and entertainment publication Gambit Weekly. In 2005, BeauSoleil founder Michael Doucet was one of 12 artists awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2009, BeauSoleil won another Grammy in the then newly created Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album category for the album Live at the 2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
The band's name is a tribute to Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, the leader of the Acadian resistance to British deportation efforts beginning in 1755. Broussard led the attack against Dartmouth Nova Scotia, in what would become known as the "Dartmouth Massacre". Beausoleil was eventually captured, but following his imprisonment managed to lead 193 exiles to Louisiana before he died in 1765.
For tickets, audio and video clips as well as more information about the performance, visit www.thecolonialtheatre.org