Sharon Armstrong's blog

Traditional Irish music festivals in the States often play host to various groups that seem to be more attached to a certain idea of Celtic history, a chain-mail and heaving bosom kind of idea, than to the more historically correct musical and cultural aspects of traditional Celtic music. But you know, who is to say that you can't have a little fun with established traditions?

One of the best things about traditional music festivals is, in my opinion, that they blend the new with the old. Just as music of different genres doesn’t exist in a vacuum – be it country, blues, folk or metal, traditional and contemporary, or some fusion thereof - neither do the cultures in which said music is created, and enjoyed. They blend, they evolve, they develop and they usually have a good time doing so.

The Scène Popeyes is the bigger of the two permanent stages in the Lafayette International Festival, and it was massive: a huge, curving flag banner of a stage arching up into the flawless blue sky.

The crowd drank cold beers as they waited for the Irish to arrive. It was breezy but still hot, and when the Lúnasa lads - Kevin Crawford, Cillian Vallely, Trevor Hutchinson, Paul Meehan, and Sean Smyth - strolled onto the stage, they were all wearing sun-glasses, and big ol’ smiles.
Kevin Crawford, resplendent in khaki shorts and shades, chatted to the crowd from the stage as the band set up.

“It’s Sean’s birthday,” he said. “And he is the only single man in the band, so if anyone wants to give him a present, then applications will be taken after the gig.”

Being someone who is happiest with a full stomach, the food vendors immediately caught my attention. I am a huge fan of crawfish, those tiny, tasty crustaceans that according to Cajun lore originated as lobsters up in Canadian Acadia.

In the story, these sentimental lobsters apparently missed the Cajuns so much after their forced eviction from Canada by the British Government, that they followed the dispossessed people down south to Louisiana, becoming smaller but sweeter all the time due to the hard journey. Finally the lobsters found the Cajuns again in the swamps and bayous that were now home for many of the Acadian settlers, and they were re-united. Errr…happily for the lobsters?

I don’t know how true that story is, and I don’t know if eating your friends after such a long journey is really the best way to hi, but I do know that ‘mudbugs’, as they are affectionately known, are the staple ingredient of hundreds of recipes in Louisiana, and I have never met a crawfish that I haven’t liked…at least once they are cooked.

Therefore it was no surprise that the dish that immediately caught my eye was a crawfish and spinach stew, served in a bread bowl. Edible bowls! Fantastic! And it was – spicy, rich and creamy, and packed with tender crawfish tails. With all the spinach in it, I told myself, it had to be healthy, and non-fattening, right? Oh, well…

The first concrete indications that tell you that you have you are leaving Creole Louisiana and entering Cajun Country Louisiana, apart for the miles and miles of flowering swamp and verdant bayou flying beneath your wheels under the elevated freeway of I-10 West, are the first large road-side signs on either side of the Interstate that read ‘Drive though boudin, and pork cracklings – Exit here.’ Hmmm boudin and pork cracklings…yummy!

It was kind of a driech morning - unusually cloudy and chilly for late April in Louisiana - when I started the two hour drive towards Lafayette. The outskirts of New Orleans end abruptly - one minute you are driving through suburbia, the next you are ten feet above what looks like miles and miles of water. Broken trees line the I-10 on either side, still scarred and broken by Katrina. The Interstate is no longer a road really; it is more like a long, off-white concrete bridge across the waters of Lake Ponchartrain, and onwards towards the Bonne Carré Spillway, past Dalrymple, Whiskey Bay and the Atchafalaya Basin towards Lafayette.

It’s an easy drive though, a nice, pretty, drive, just like Lafayette is a nice, pretty little town. But it is a pretty little town which each year hosts a pretty, big festival - one that is getting bigger every year.

The city of Lafayette lies just about 125 miles west of New Orleans, on the banks of the Vermillion River. Originally founded as Vermillionville in 1821 by Jean Mouton, a French speaking Acadian, it was renamed for a General Lafayette in 1884, and is the center of Cajun Culture in Louisiana.

The Cajuns, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, are distinct ethnic group living in Louisiana who are descended from French-speaking exiles from what was once known as Acadia in Canada. The name Cajun is a corruption of Acadian, and the area of Acadia was made up of Nova Scotia, and parts of Quebec, the Maritime Provinces and modern day Maine.

The Acadians were evicted by the British Government in the mid 1700’s in what became known as the Le Grand Dérangement, or the Great Upheaval. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

It was raining hard when I piled into a friend’s aptly named Highlander SUV, and headed towards Jackson, and the 18th annual Mississippi Celtic Fest.

Jackson, Mississippi lies just around 190 miles due north of New Orleans and it’s a straight shot along Interstate 55. After quick truck-stop to pick up wine, whisky and a helping of pterodactyl sized chicken wings, we pulled up at the Cabot Lodge Milsaps on State Street, just three hours after leaving the hot, humid streets of New Orleans

The Cabot, with its cavernous, comfortably furnished lobby and deer antler chandeliers, is a great hotel, and since it is just a few minutes’ drive away from the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry/National Agricultural Aviation Museum where the festival takes place, it’s convenient as well.

The Magnolia State of Mississippi is not the first place that springs to mind when looking for traditional music festivals in the United States, but the Mississippi Celtic Festival has been growing yearly in numbers of visitors and in numbers of performers since its inception in the early nineties.

One of the very best things about music festivals is that the fun never shuts down at the same time as the the festival gates do; it too just takes a little bit of a side-step. Or in this case a side-step, and then a shuttle-bus ride back to the Radisson Hotel.

I once heard someone describe festivals as just a way to corral sessions and, personally, I think that they might have be on to something there. Put together a whole lot of great musicians from all over the world in the one place, and, seriously, what else is going to happen? It’s a wonderful thing!

It was on Sunday morning that we eventually found Eamonn. Or rather, we got a kind of forlorn early morning text, and then he found us - good lad that he is, even if he was also what my granny used to call a 'dirty stop-out'.

"What’s the story?" read the text.

Feeling our usual helpful selves, neither Karen nor myself could resist the obvious retort.

"Morning Glory," we texted in tandem. Of course.

“Aren't ye right funny women :-D” came the immediate reply.

Saturday had turned first into a long day, and then into an even longer night, however it seemed that we had all survived.

The Quote of the Morning so far has come from Karen, a fiddler from Wicklow.

"Sharon has just woke up, and she can't find her clothes again."