FESTIVALSCRÉOLESACADIENS

Festivals Acadiens et Créoles has always been a lifechanging event for Steve Riley. A 1984 photo in the book “Cajun Music and Zydeco” shows a wide-eyed, 15-year-old Riley parked at the foot of the festival’s main stage afraid to blink, scared to miss a single move from fiddle legend Dewey Balfa.

Four years later, Riley was an accordion phenom on that same stage with his heralded Mamou Playboys band. A recording contract with a national label and worldwide touring soon followed, kicking off Riley’s career as a new standard-bearer in Cajun music.

Fast forward to March 2022 and a 52-year-old Riley is back on the Festivals Acadiens et Créoles stage. He has 16 albums, a Best Regional Roots Music Album Grammy and a refreshed spirit. The coronavirus pandemic allowed time to become sober from opioid use and near-burnout.

On that festival day, Riley looks back at the drummer on stage who, at 13, is an inch or two from being the tallest Mamou Playboy. The drummer is Riley’s oldest son Burke who’s been banging a waltz and two-step beat since he was in diapers.

“Burke is now the drummer in the Mamou Playboys singing high harmony,” said Riley. “My daughter asked me in (our) Toledo Bend (vacation), ‘Dad, out of all the things you’ve done in your life, what is the most special thing you’ve ever done? What means the most to you, out of all the things you’ve done, all the places you’ve been?’” Riley’s response: ‘Being able to play music with you and your brothers. You can take my Grammy, you can take it all. Playing music with yall has been the highlight of my life. I’m a lucky man.’”

The Rileys are among the South Louisiana families that have fueled Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, the annual celebration of music, food, language and culture at Girard Park. Several generations of Ardoins, Balfas, Broussards, Daigles, Delafoses, Dopsies, Franks, Huvals, Michots, Savoys, Williams and other musical families have played the event that began in 1974 as a tribute to Cajun music.

Organizers of that first tribute feared their families would commit them for their crazed notion. Cajun music and zydeco, regarded as dancehall “chankychank” for Schlitz drinkers and denture wearers, was presented at a sit-down concert. The setting was Blackham Coliseum, an 8,400-seat, basketball arena with history as a stage for The Supremes, James Brown and touring rock stars.

Organizers were close to signing their own commitment papers when just hours before the tribute began, a heavy thunderstorm caused flash flooding. Yet musicians, some with pants rolled up, started to trickle in. “Around five o’clock, we noticed whole families arriving,” Barry Ancelet wrote in the book, “One Generation at a Time: Biography of a Cajun and Creole Music Festival.” “Many of them three generations strong, many of them carrying their shoes and babies. It occurred to me for the first time that our wildest dreams might not be so wild.”

The event grew into the world’s largest Cajun and Creole music celebration, held the third weekend of every October. After the coronavirus pandemic paused the festival for two years, organizers held a special spring comeback in 2022. Musicians, families and friends packed Girard Park with a reunion-style atmosphere that had many asking for the festival twice a year. “We were wondering why so many people showed up in March,” said Ancelet. “The easy answer is so many people were dying to hear live music and dying to get together. That’s all true, but I think something else happened…people started thinking, ‘Wait a minute. I love this stuff. It means something to us. This stuff matters to who we are.’” “If people were really struck by that, Ancelet said, “I hope that realization endures a bit. It’s easy to take this stuff for granted.”

Riley doesn’t take his festival years for granted. Two years after his unbreakable stare at Dewey Balfa, a 17-year-old Riley played the festival with his idol.