Chaudière Noire

The Blackpot Music Festival and Cook-off is held every last full weekend in October. This year it was October 25-27. This festival is, in my opinion, of the most meaningful and profound festivals in Louisiana. Get there Thursday evening/Friday morning and set up your tent and get your home-base camp site situated. You drink, cook, and enjoy good company until the music starts usually 6 Friday. Ya drink some more, be with friends, eat goof food, and listen to the music. There's only two stages, a small festival indeed. The pavillion and the chapel. This festival is a relatively new one, The Revelers talk about the history in this interview. This year was one for the history books, it was The Red Stick Ramblers last show together. Joining together in Baton Rouge, LA in 1999 with  a unique sound of Cajun music and Western Swing they totally dominated the music scene with seven albums released and multiple tours under their belt. But it isn't the complete end for them, most of the band members have joined together in The Revelers to continue the life of their music. So after the musical performances have ended on the big stage everyone goes back to their camp and eat, drink, converse and jam. Jam. People go around from campsite to campsite and just jam. Some people have a fiddle others an accordion even mandolin, banjo, tubas, guitars, harmonicas, washboards, spoons... It is truly an amazing thing that happens. We jam till the early mornings of the next day. 4am saturday was my breaking point. But all night long I went listen to the jams, and I danced. This is a place where you can do what your heart desired and I wanted to dance until I couldn't dance anymore and that is exactly what I did. With a man from Texas nonetheless. A cowboy looking man with the boots and hat to match, I swear I danced three hours straight with him at a tent where I had searched all night for. Blake Miller and Adam Doucet were playing, both of which can play accordion and fiddle so they switched out every so often. I walked the entire campsite to find a good place to stay before landing in one spot, somewhere where I knew the songs and could watch a fiddler and take his style in. And when I crossed a pitched white tent that had the 'Podnah Proclamation' against the back wall and the sounds of an old Horace Trahan song playing- I had found it. Adam had taken a ride on the fiddle but was so souled that he was messing it up, Blake jokingly said "Mais, don't mess up my song!" I laughed because it is too great of a song to be ruined by a drunkard musician. At the end, it was perfect.. A little time no one was playing or talking. I looked at Blake and asked if that was one of Horace's songs. "Yeah, how you know that?" It's a shame that Horace is now recognized only by the zydeco he plays. But it's the history that people need to appreciate. The story, his songs. His original songs in french- Cajun music. Something that is rare in this culture. I heard Blake Miller is following his acts by creating his own. Anyway to what Blake had questioned I told him
"He's my uncle."
"Nah, really?"
I nodded my head
"Well you must know that butt thang.."
He started to play it on his accordion
"Of course! That's my jam"
He laughed and nodded his head while smiling.
They played and played and I watched, One thing about Blake as a fiddler is his bow hold. So relaxed and all in the wrist. Most people play with their forearm and shoulder, something I don't agree with entirely. It resembled my Uncle Braz but better. I fell in love with the way he played his fiddle, the way his fingers hit the strings ever so slightly- a caressing motion with every note. He loves his fiddle he loves the music. He doesn't force things that can't be done. He just plays. I wonder what he thinks about when he plays and looking into the void spaces. not at any one person or thing.
After that thought I left to go find Lilli, my best friend and Louisiana venture partner. At that moment they had stopped playing and were taking a break.. I was a little ways away and I hear "Horace Trahan's niece..."
I turn my head with a huge smile he said again "Come see."
I don't remember the exact words exchanged but enough was said for him to figure out that my dad was Kevin Huval and I had two older brothers that wrestled up north and lived everywhere else but here my entire life. The thing is that he knew this already. Later I had gone to my dad to tell him and he said yeah, when he was still in high school he had come visit for some event when we were in Illinois and he cooked for us and Lynn and Charlie, a fish dish I think. That made me really appreciative of him because the existence of my immediate family and who my dad is within the 13 is not common knowledge around here. In the end he asked my name
"Zoe Huval"
"Blake Miller"
"Nice to meet you and I'll see you around"


à plus tard,
  Zoë Louise Huval