In August of 2007, I had the opportunity to sit down with accordionist Ray Abshire to talk about Cajun music. Much of our discussion centered upon Cajun music in the past and how that music compared to the present. Mr. Abshire is a self-described purist, advocating a traditional approach to Cajun music. However, he sees a great deal of promise in today's musicians. He also describes himself as fortunate to have been born in a culture as rich and fertile as that of south Louisiana.
Mr. Abshire was most gracious with his time, and our conversation went on for well over an hour. During that time, he offered a number of observations that I thought would be useful for beginning students of the Cajun accordion. In fact, some of his suggestions were not only original but surprising. Accordingly, I've included those excerpts from our conversation below.
In transcribing the conversation, I've made every attempt to convey the exact exchange, leaving the flow of the conversation intact and including the informalities natural to spoken language:
On Developing an Individual Style
RA: [In the old days, ]Everybody played at the same place, every Saturday night. Or they rotated clubs; you played one Saturday here and [the next] you play this other club. They rotated back and forth. And everybody, all these bands had their following. Everybody, they were all unique. You could go from one club to the next, and you could just park in that gravel parking lot and roll your window down, and you would know who was on that accordion. Because they all had their own style, their own unique flavor. It’s because they didn’t listen [to each other]—you know they were all playing [at the same time]. Logistics back then were a big deal. And you didn’t have this “instant music.” All you had was Jerry Dugas on Saturday morning. Or Revon Reed there in Mamou. So—and these guys were working—so all they knew was their music and the way they learned it, so they were all so unique. You go back and you listen to all these old artists, and after about the third note, you know who it is. Today, [whistles], man, you got 28 Steve Rileys and 32 Wayne Toupses out there. And it’s not—I’m not saying it’s bad but—they’re cheating themselves; they’ve gotta find their own, you know, they’ve got to find their own interpretation of this music, and they’ve got to express it for themselves. That’s something else that I see in the quality of music today. You don’t have that origina—that individualism.
JM: Right.
RA: You don’t have the individualism you had back then. There are just a few of them out there that have listened to themselves and play what they’re comfortable with. But there’s not many. The individualism’s gone.
JM: That seems like that might be a curse of recording and, you know, the fact that obtaining recordings and listening to recordings makes the music so prolific—
RA: Yeah! It cheats—
JM: It also tends to—
RA: I believe it’s a curse. Yeah. And naturally, first, you have to match the instrument—in my case the accordion—you have to be around someone who plays the accordion to get that basic knowledge, that technical [ability], the dexterity, but once you’re past the basics on that [pause], you really don’t want to hang around an accordion player. You want to—and where I learned was from the fiddle players. And most of my songs I learned on the bandstand with fiddle players. Then, what you’re doing is you’re listening to the melody, the tune, from another instrument. And then you’re bringing it out on your instrument. Now, I think that’s what gave everybody the originality back then. The way they learned new tunes, someone would come to the bandstand and hum it for them or whistle it, and the fiddle player would say, “Hey, I played with so-and-so last week and they played this tune,” and the accordion player would listen to it for a little while, and he’d pick it up and after about two or three Saturdays, he had his own take on it.
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The Good and Bad of Jam Sessions
RA: You know, so these jam sessions, as good as they are, I always tell in the workshops, if you walk into a bad jam session, leave. Or, you know, be sociable, but don’t bathe in the pond. Why would you want to play bad music? You know, it’s mind over muscle, and it’s repetition and if you’re playing bad music, practicing bad music, guess what, you’re going to play bad music. But if there happens to be a great fiddle player sitting right here, a good accordion player, man, get as close as you can, lock on to his rhythm, and just, you know, hang with him as long as you can. That’s what, to me, is so crucial. You gotta play with good musicians to play good music. And, um, that’s where I’ve always been blessed. I’ve always had…God, back then…it was hard not to find a good musician back then. And they played less. And they had less avenues; they worked all week, and they played on Saturday night or Friday night. There were no teachers; it wasn’t on the radio all the time. There weren’t all these public jam sessions. Or festivals. But they played music, it’s like, so I guess what happened was the ones that ended up on the bandstand were those musical families and those guys that really had it. They were musicians. [. . .] Back then, to make it on the, to play it, [in] these halls, you had to have it or you didn’t have a job. Two or three dancers go and complain to the club owner, you’re too fast, you’re—you had to have it, man. And so, the better ones were the ones, like I say, it was a handful of families. You’d always see the LeJeunes, the, back then, the Balfas, the Abshires, the Ardoins. You had the, there were a lot of them, a lot of Cormiers. There were probably about eight or ten families; every band had one, at least one, or two. With those surnames. You know, a lot of times they were, they were the guiding force. The ones everybody locked on to. And the Creole players, you had the Delafoses and the Ardoins. It’s like it ran in their blood. Today, there’re some good musicians. But a lot of the bands out there today, part of the band is not there. They’re just not with the program. I mean, they’re hanging, but it ain’t clicking. It ain’t clicking. But it’s selling. And I’m not trying to be, what I don’t want to do is say [they shouldn’t] continue to try. But it’s not like it was back then. When you walked in, those bands were tight, tight, tight, tight. Man, you’d go listen to Aldus Roger—nobody was off [slaps hands together in rhythm]! I guess they’d played together—back then, you’d play together years and years and years with somebody. You’d know what the next guy was going to do before…
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The Blessings of Local Folk Music and Having a Local Culture
RA: I was at the National Folk Festival in Australia and I gave a workshop one day, and after the workshop I said, “I’d like to hear, can any of you play me some Australian music?” And they looked around, and you know what the answer was? “We don’t have a music.” The closest thing they had; they had the aborigines with those long—they said "that’s the closest thing we can say we have to having an original folk music here." But it’s such a melting—they did not have--. What’s big over there is Bluegrass, Country and Western. And Cajun is starting to make some [headway]. But it hit me right at the—you don’t have a music and back home [laughs], we’ve got four or five originals. Originals. Born right here.
JM: That’s definitely my experience moving [away]from here, and I spent some time in Texas and then Missouri. It’s—it’s barren. And I’ve offended people by saying that, but it is barren.
RA: It is. It’s something missing; it’s like your soul’s gone. You know, if you get in the right—go to Gueydan, go to Church Point, go—oh, you go and ask for some home cooking. And you’re going [to find] just a little bit of difference, but it’s always—Chicken fricasse’s going to taste the same. The gumbo’s going to be pretty much the same. I’m not talking about restaurants; I’m talking about home cooking.
JM: Yeah. With just a secret ingredient.
RA: Yeah, in Ville Platte, they’re going to put in smoked sausage and in Gueydan, they’re going to put fresh sausage. Something like that. But it’s all—it’s all going to be rice and potato salad. You’ve got your three starches. Bread. It’s like—and these people don’t know each other, but it’s our culture. It’s how we cook.
JM: The thing that always struck me was, one of the first years after I was married, during the first cold snap, we get this idea: we go to Albertsons, get a chicken, a link of andouille, some rice. We’re standing in line to check out, what does everyone else have with them? Chicken, andouille, and rice.
RA: Yeah.
JM: And, you know, it’s almost telepathic, in this strange way. It’s—“Finally, it’s gumbo weather!”
RA: Yeah. We all get the same feeling. It’s like it’s inherited; it’s like it’s part of us. We’re so fortunate, you know, we really are blessed. It’s just hard—unless somebody comes to Louisiana—it’s hard for them to visualize and understand what we have going on here. And then you look at people who’re born and raised here who take it for granted and don’t—they don’t get it. They don’t get it; they don’t bother to—
JM: Well, you know, honestly, that was me. For a long time. And it wasn’t until I realized that all places aren’t alike. You know, I could survive in Texas because there was that infusion of Tex-Mex border culture.
RA: Yeah.
JM: In Missouri, you’ve got people who are trying to keep all of that out. You’ve got, um, I forget what they’re called—the people who want to patrol the border, the civilians who want to control the border.
RA: Yeah, yeah. Minutemen.
JM: Yeah, Minutemen. And they want to keep that out and I’m like “Why?”
RA: Gaww. [pause]. I did an interesting festival there in a little community called Booneville, Missouri a long time ago. I got this call to go to this folk festival. Nice little festival. It was this deal where the locals did the cooking. It was a pre-Civil war community. On the river. I took the call, and I thought about it a while and they told me who was going and it was some good Bluegrass. So, we put a group together and we went, and they wanted me to do a workshop and I said to myself “Booneville, Missouri, who in the hell’s gonna want to attend an accordion workshop?” I got there, it was a German community, [laughs] they were lined up with their accordions, man! I said, “No shit! Look at all these Germans with these accordions." So we sat down, and naturally, it was polka-ville. But they wanted to feel that syncopation, and we managed to work our way through a song. At the end, it was starting to, starting to get it. So, you never know, you just never know, man. Booneville. It was called the Big Muddy. The Big Muddy Festival. They have it every year. You walk into these little pockets of things—it was a little German community. And they had a little culture going; they had some cooking—their own food, their sauerkraut and everything, drinking their beer. Playing their polka. So that was one little pocket where they managed to hold on to it. Boonville. If you’ve ever got the chance, it’s a nice little town.
JM: Other side of the state from me, but I’ll have to check that out.
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On Nathan Abshire and Learning to Play by Ear:
RA: You have to understand, if you hear and you pull, you’re going to get this sound. If you push—he [Nathan Abshire] couldn’t read or write. And I know, none of us could really read or write music, but, in his case, he couldn’t read or write. But he knew; he knew automatically that anytime that finger was here and this one was here and he was pulling, it’s going to be a [certain] sound. He knew exactly where—that’s what you call playing by ear.
JM: Right.
RA: We can—I can be in my truck and hear a brand new tune coming on [the radio]—by whoever, and if I would just listen to that tune and then turn it off. Not anything—don’t let anything [distract me]—if I would just hum that tune to myself, when I get home, I’m playing that tune. It’s playing by ear, because I know exactly what he’s doing. Once I figure out what key accordion he’s in—that’s the only thing that’s a little difficult today; you’ve got B flats, everybody playing on E’s. Now, it’s not the old C, D thing anymore. So, once I figure out what he’s playing on, I can recognize the C and the D and the G. And that’s the beauty of playing by ear. And that’s what you’ve got to strive for. But if you’ve got to count and go “Okay, the 7 button twice . . .” Boy, how complicated is that! I mean, you’re really making it hard on yourself.
JM: You’re turning it into math.
RA: You really are. I try to emphasize that a lot. Sometimes, I’ll offend people in these classes. I’ll say “We’re not starting until you take that tablet and pencil, put it on the ground.” There’ll be none of that. But I’ll say, I’m going to show you how I learned and how the guy who taught me learned. If you want to learn Cajun music, I’m going to show you—you have a much better chance of playing Cajun music if you’ll listen and quit thinking so damn much. And I won’t say “damn” but . . . . But the bright ones they’ve got today, a lot of them bring, they take video and they take that home with ‘em, and they can slow it up, speed it up. Boy! That’s a hell of a tool, huh? [Whistles] Man! Even coming out now, they’ve got these pitch control machines where, if you slow it up or speed it up, it doesn’t change the pitch.
JM: I’ve heard of that, yeah.
RA: Man! Is that incredible? So, because a lot of times these old recordings, they’re out of key anyway, they need to be tuned. That’s another story. But they can bring it up, hold it there, speed it up, slow it down. Man!
JM: [Laughs].
RA: Like I say, there’s no reason today. If you want to learn how to play, my God! With all the tools—but then there’s always that tradeoff.
JM: You don’t want to sound like everybody else.
RA: Yeah. It’s a real tradeoff. Because you’re not listening, with your eyes closed. And having your own personal expression on that—and that’s, to me, that’s the big drawback on [it]. Boy, there’s some stuff out there today. Maybe, it’s making it too easy; I don’t know. Maybe you don’t have to work hard enough.
JM: Maybe.
RA: When it’s that easy, you don’t really spend a whole lot of time with that tune, you know. You’re watching it, [claps hands], you see what—you’re not really having to think your way through it as far as—“that note was . . . well, I don’t like that note.”
JM: Yeah.
RA: Nobody’s doing that anymore. You know, it’s right there; it’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I think maybe they’re learning too fast. Is that possible?
JM: It’s very likely. It’s very possible.
RA: I think that may be something that’s, um, I don’t know. All I know is it’s still there.
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