The Cajun & zydeco family feeling: Has that feeling changed?

By Henk Mutsaers

A few years ago I saw a Louisiana travel promotion that said: “Come as you are. Leave different.” My experiences over the last two years don’t quite subscribe to this ‘feeling’ anymore. Hairline cracks have appeared in that feeling, however, I know exactly how this came about. It came hitchhiking on the back of the ‘new normal’ which is not normal at all, and which I resist with everything I have, that this is ever going to be a ‘new normal’.

My introduction to zydeco as a deejay was the song by Clifton Chenier that made the hit parade in 1978,

“Keep on Knockin’, but You Can’t Come In.” Though I could barely pronounce the French song title as a deejay, the song had a magical party feeling that you couldn’t stand still to. “Tu Peux Cogner Mais Tu Peux Pas Rentrer”, the French version, was played a lot in the discotheques. This was my first time hearing zydeco, and it would have a long lasting influence on my life.

At the beginning of the nineties, a local band in the south [of Holland] changed its name from the “River Band” to the “River Zydeco Band.” On the market square, drummer Frits Loonen gave me a cassette tape with four songs on it. Everywhere they played there was a packed house, I heard. I didn’t have the chance to catch their live performances because I was working as a deejay those evenings. In 1993 the band and their already active fan club organized a Cajun and zydeco festival. I became involved in producing the “Veerse dag festival” for about ten years, and the organizer brought the production team to the C&Z festival in 1995. I was quickly sold on zydeco in particular. The next year I was already on stage singing my song, “I have a money tree in my garden,” with the group Louisiana Radio. Over the next few years I took Cajun and zydeco dance lessons with Gary Hayman, Phil Underwood, Mary Elms, Harold Guillory and others. Soon I also found the Cajun music much more enjoyable after I had learned to dance. I attended Cajun and zydeco festivals all over Europe and became a full-time member of the ‘C&Z family’.

Henk Mutsaers at the ancient ruins established in Central France as regional capital by Emperor Augustus when the region was conquered as part of the Roman Empire.

Fast forward to 2019. We had just finished a successful edition of the 27th ZydecoZity festival and that winter from France the group Ton Ton Gris Gris came to play at the Beer Advertising Cafe. Because I am very politically aware and active with my weekly radio program and podcast dotcom radio, I had given singer Guy Ott a yellow vest and he put it on on stage. Later in an interview, the meaning of the yellow vest was briefly discussed.

Later that week I was summoned

by the board of the festival and asked that I keep politics and music separate from now on. Okay, but actually quite strange, I thought. Music has always been an outlet, and I had already recorded two protest songs with the River Zydeco Band: “Here’s to Your Health” and “Hope Comes in the Dark.” I wasn’t happy with the festival board’s demand. After all, I was being robbed of the free expression of my opinion.

I emigrated to France and began making my ZydecoZity radio program from there. On March 17, 2020 at 12 noon, the first lockdown was set. I knew exactly what was happening from the very first moment. This is a false flag operation to institute global dictatorship according to the agenda 21 plan.

I had been informed for years through virologist Stefan Lanka that a live virus did not exist and that an outright assault on our freedom was now taking place. This needed to be stated as fears struck society about the “deadly virus” that had been predicted years before. I decided that I could no longer remain silent. I made a single announcement of what I saw happening in the two-hour program, and it turned out that the board totally disagreed with my approach.

I can’t keep quiet. What I know everyone should know. That little hair crack became a fat crack. I decided to quit my program — my passion of the past 25 years. It was not a light decision for me to make.

Now in France and a little bit

settled, I got the itch to start another Cajun Zydeco radio program. I applied at the regional radio FDL, because in all of France, there was no radio program dedicated to the roots of Cajun music. At FDL, they were also charmed by the music after listening to an old radio recording from the Netherlands. After the preparations and recording of jingles, we started programming in earnest on December 2, 2020. After a few months on the evening shows, the broadcast was not only on Tuesday evenings but also on Sunday afternoons, in part due to French cultural input.

France is a country where protesting and standing up for your rights is in the genes of the people as in no other country in the world. Because of the lockdown and confinement, the weekly “yellow vest” protests were temporarily suppressed, but not nipped in the bud. That discontent steadily festered under the surface. Cautiously, in June 2021, I announced on my radio program in English, then also in French, of Van Morrison’s new recording, “Baby Please Don’t Go,” followed by “No More Lockdowns,” a song which for convenience I categorized as Cajun music.

My own protest songs were played on the radio after that. Then in July, weekly protests started again in full force in France, in which I also participated. My recorded program was broadcast non-stop on August 10 in protest with a short statement at the beginning. Whatever the consequences, I felt I had to do this!

French protest of the Pass Sanitaire. Bring your own chair. Free food and drinks.

Each week the feeling of having fun with the music on the radio prevailed but the serious note was always briefly touched upon.

You have to know that many people here are really scared and go through ‘life’ outside and alone in the car with a mask on. The propaganda machine has done its job very well here. However, at the demonstrations where I have also spoken a few times with the help of an interpreter, they are fully aware of the plan to introduce the China style “Social Credit System.”

For the next edition of the festival, are we still welcome then?

On September 4, there was to be a live gig for the first time in two years by the local band, Blue Bayou, by the organizers of the famous Saulieu festival (and later the followup version in Saint Sernin du Bois). The band played every other year at the ZydecoZity festival so every year hands were shaken when I announced the band on stage or when we met here in France.

Just this month the Pass Sanitaire had come into effect and with it, apartheid had taken hold

here. Technically, everyone must be vaccinated or tested negative which applies to every visitor, staff as well as artist.

The location of the performance was on a terrace which was located exactly next to the gathering point of the weekly event where both the start and end point were. I walked by with a big protest sign and my washboard to also make some “noise” together with some others.

At that moment the band was just unloading and setting up for their performance. I had both hands full, but I could have put my sign and washboard down to greet the band. I felt a distance, and no one from the band spoke to me either. Beyond a friendly nod, no one inquired how I was doing now that I was living in their country. No one acknowledged me, though I had started a radio program that promoted their music and produced the festival where they performed.

I quickly realized what had just happened. The distance I felt came from both sides. Even the band members did not know how to deal with the new situation of apartheid, of keeping their distance.

I had a short conversation with the bandleader, but of course he was also busy setting up. Later, after the performance, I was separated from the band without the Pass Sanitaire as a consciously unvaccinated person. A strange surreal feeling of ‘not normal’.

We must not let this happen, I

thought. Part of our ‘family’ has fallen to the propaganda machine. Part of ‘our lives’ is no longer normal.

The following week there were three men who were beating their drums lustily and skilfully, and I joined in on the washboard. I know where their unbridled energy came from: the discontent to counterbalance the situation that had arisen. The dictatorship can never suppress this energy. After all, isn’t a part of the Cajun and zydeco culture also formed by oppression and a slave past?

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this essay are solely the author’s. If you have a story or opinion that relates in some way to the Cajun and zydeco music and dance scene, send it to floridacajunzydeco@yahoo.com and it may appear in the next issue.