BeauSoleil’s Cajuns make Bangor rock

A local television station’s weekly question-of-the-week segment seeking viewer response has been asking if viewers would attend this weekend’s National Folk Festival at Bangor. Talk about your classic no-brainer…

Can there possibly be anyone living within hailing distance of Bangor – except perhaps for the sick and the infirm, incarcerated convicts, dedicated hermits and those unfortunate souls who tend to come unglued in any crowd that numbers more than six people – who does not plan to attend at least a portion of the weekend’s festivities?

First of all, it’s free. “No chahge,” as Dick Stacey, prominent Brewer entrepreneur and accidental television personality, would have put it during his allotted 15 minutes of fame around here some years ago. Pretty hard to pass up a deal like that. Beats mowing the lawn or shingling the barn roof, for sure, and even trumps a layabout weekend at camp communing with the loons.

Such mundane pursuits can easily wait when the Raging Cajuns of the popular musical group, BeauSoleil, are in town serving up their patented Louisiana bayou country fiddle tunes guaranteed to force spectators to kick up their heels in pure joy, inhibitions be damned. Come Sunday, after they’ve seen the talented Doucet brothers and friends in person, fiddlin’ and a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’ while little Jimmy Breaux flails away on the accordian to work the crowd into a proper frenzy, more than a few festival patrons will be able to cross off one more “must” from their To-Do list before they depart this earthly vale of tears.

BeauSoleil, you say? Playing multiple gigs right here in my back yard for three days and nights and it won’t cost me a cent to take it in? Surely, you jest. Tell me this is not one of those dreams where I wake up to find that not only is it some sort of cruel hoax, but I’m also still as big a dope as I was before I fell asleep.

If it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that the no-admission aspect pretty much spoils a chance to employ a perfectly good cliche (I hate when that happens), one might observe that the event would be well worth the price of admission, even without BeauSoleil. Because such an assemblage of musical acts, demonstrations, street performances, ethnic cuisines, displays of arts and native craftsmanship would normally command a serious cover charge were it not bankrolled by the National Council for the Traditional Arts and generous local sponsors.

The three-day spectacle includes the Papantla Flyers, a group of fearless Aztec Indians from Mexico who truly know the ropes, so to speak, of hurling themselves from the top of an 80-foot pole in a ceremony designed to command the attention of even the most jaded bungee jumper among us. Plus bluegrass music to die for; something called “dieselbilly” to assuage the closet redneck contingent, I suppose, and something else called “zydeco,” which Creole adherents have described as “like a gumbo – a little of this and a little of that. A little French, a little English, some blues, reggae and rock…”

As well, simultaneous entertainment at several venues along the riverfront includes Celtic, Hawaiian, South American and Tibetan music and rituals; master fiddlers down from the hills; a New Orleans brass band, and on and on until one’s head virtually explodes with the overload. If you can’t find something to brighten your day here, you may be a serious party-pooper.

By design, the festival is heavy on the legacy of the French in Maine and North America, and rightfully so, for we are a state richer for the contributions our French friends and neighbors have made to our folk culture. In addition to Beau Soleil and the Creole zydeco group, the weekend’s bill of fare features the high-energy offerings of the award-winning La Bottine Souriante of Quebec, as well as the Franco-Canadian step-dancing group, the Steppin’ Ambassadors. The enthusiasm and talent of this troupe for the old-time traditional step-dance, born in the lumber camps of the northland as an antidote to off-duty lumberjack boredom, reportedly will knock your socks off. Or, in lieu of socks, your sandals.

If ever there were an opportunity for the good parishoners of the St. John Valley and the Franco precincts downstate to show up en masse to get reacquainted with their musical roots and teach us Anglophones a little something about how to have a hot time in the old town tonight, this would be it.

On this weekend, when Bangor rocks, it’s difficult to imagine that a high percentage of Mainers, given their ‘druthers, would not want to be a part of the scene.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.