Valse de Balfa

Another song that's been haunting me recently is Valse de Balfa, another song written by the Balfa Brothers. I was first struck by its plaintive power while listening to the Red Stick Ramblers' version from their eponymous debut. Their version, which unfortunately is not available online for listening, is driven by big propulsive drums. In contrast, the Balfa Brothers version from The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music lacks drums, not uncommon at the time, but carries that droning fiddle lines and more of an urgency in the vocals.

Here are the lyrics in French and the translation, again by Ann Savoy. Most poignant is verse 2, a common experience for most of us, I think.

Valse de Balfa (Balfa Waltz)
1. Quand j´ai parti de la maison
J´avais fait mon idée
J´étais parti pour te chercher, cher,
Où mourir au bout de mon sang.
When I left the house
I had made up my mind
I left to go find you, dear,
Or to end my own life.

2. Quand j´ai arrivé à ta maison
J´en ai trouvé -z-un autre avec toi
Ça, ça a cassé mon cœur, cher,
J´aimerais mieux mourir que voir ça.
2. When I got to your house
I found you with another.
that broke my heart.
I would rather die than see that.

3. Si j´aurais cinq jours dans ma vie
J´en donnerais trois dans les cinq
Pour passer las deux autres avec toi
J´aimerais mourir dans tes bras.
3. If I had five days in my life
I’d give three of the five
To stay the other two with you
I would like to die in your arms.

I had never seen the idiomatic phrase Où mourir au bout de mon sang but the construction with the verb mortir + au bout de mon sang is pretty well attested in Standard French, although I am sans my good French dictionary.

Another Cajun classic that goes a long way in explaining certain Cajun attitudes.

Port Arthur Blues

Since I haven't been able to resolve some of the vocabulary issues of Valse de Port Arthur, I thought I'd give the lyrics and translation of another Cajun song about Port Arthur, Port Arthur Blues. This one was written originally by the Balfa Brothers, and it's short but poignant. Transcription and translation is courtesy of Ann Allen Savoy from her wonderful book, Cajun Music: A Reflection of the People, Vol. I.

1. Tu m'as dit hier au soir / tu pouvais plus rev'nir
plus t'en revenir pour me rejoindre à la maison
ô ya-yaïe!
1. You told me last night
You couldn't love me anymore
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh it hurts!

2. Mon, je vois pas / Qui je t'ai fait
Quo' faire donc, tu veux pas / T'en revenir au Port Arthur?
ô ya-yaïe!
2. Me, I don't see what I did
So why don't you want to anymore
Come home to Port Arthur?
Oh, it hurts!

Not much to comment on, 'cept that quo' faire is Cajun French for 'Why?'. I do believe the translation of the first verse is a bit off since it looks like it should read:
You told me last night
You couldn't come back
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh ya-yaïe!

Valse de Port Arthur, Part I

Since my last entry ended up being about Port Arthur, I present to you one of the Cajun songs about Port Arthur. It is a waltz called Valse de Port Arthur:

1. Oh, bébé, moi j'm'en vais au Port Arthur,
Oui, 'tit' fill', c'est toi la seul' qu'moi j'aimerai,
Oh, 'tit' fill', tu es si loin de moi,
J'reviendrai pour te r'joindr' au Port Arthur.

2. Eh, 'tit' fill', t'as trouvé qu' tu m'aimais plus,
Ouais, 'tit' mom', aujourd'hui tu veux plus m'voir,
Oh, ya-yaïe, ça fait d'la pein' de te voir,
Ouais, tout l'temps j'vais m'en aller au Port Arthur.
*Transcription of the lyrics is courtesy of http://membres.lycos.fr/breric/cajun.htm.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of slurring which utterly defeats my French transcription skills so I must rely on the kindness of les étrangers. I won't offer a translation now, but I will comment on a few peculiarly Cajun French lexical items.
'tit' fill' = 'tit' is a common abbreviation for petite, sometimes shortened all the way just to 't', especially in nicknames. My cousin Anthony was referred to by my grandfather as 'T-Ton'. Somewhat obscurely, my other cousin (and we ran long on cousins, thank you) Robert was termed 'Boscoe'. This is a long-winded way of saying that 'tit' fill' is 'little girl', a term of endearment.
ya-yaïe = "oh it hurts", a very common exclamation of pain in Cajun music. Sometimes spelled yé yaille. Cajun French transcription can be non-standardized.
'tit' mom' = I suspect that this might be le môme which is a derogatory term meaning 'lad, kid'. I'll have to check and discuss it further in Part II.

Grand Tasso

It's rare, but it does happen on occasion that a song affects me deeply. Last night I was listening to the Red Stick Ramblers, one of those young and upcoming bands that is preserving Cajun music, and I was dumbstruck by the song Grand Tasso. You can listen to it for free here, it's under their 2002 album "The Red Stick Ramblers." I can't stop listening to it.

Apparently it's a traditional song with additional lyrics by two of the band members, and I'm frantic that I can't find the lyrics to the song anywhere since I'd love to learn it. My French isn't good enough to decipher it, and although I can make out some of the lyrics (mixed with some English), I imagine the dialectical differences would defeat me.

In Cajun country, there is a food called tasso--a highly spiced and dried pork sausage that is an essential ingredient in gumbo and other gastronomical delights. There is a community called Tasso, by Bayou Mallet, near Eunice, deep in an area of road houses where Cajuns come to dance at the fais do do's each Saturday. The place figures in many a traditional song.

Well, there you go! The Red Stick Ramblers not only play traditional Cajun music, but they incorporate Western swing and jazz influences from folks like Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt, and they cover some of their songs as well.

Great stuff. I know Michael Doucet also recorded Grand Tasso, but the droning fiddle of the Red Stick Rambler's version gives it a touch of melancholy that fits so perfectly and the vocalist has that touch of world-weariness that carries it home. Anyone who covers That's What I Like About The South has got my admiration.

My Grandparents and Father Jules Daigle

I have kept few mementos of my adopted maternal grandparents. I had a leather bag full of things belonging to my grandfather, but that bag molded over in the Southeast Texas heat and humidity while in storage in a shed. I think somewhere else in storage I have some of his things, but I don't have anything of my grandmother's since I was not in Texas when she died, and she had been sick for so long with Alzheimer's, that most of her possessions had been discarded or absorbed into the family.

Last night I was looking through a stack of my sister's books, and I found my grandparent's copy of A Dictionary of the Cajun Language by Rev. Msgr. Jules O. Daigle, M.A., S.T.L. It's signed by Monsignor Daigle, but unfortunately there is no date. Here is the information that I've been able to find about Father Daigle from here:

Jules Daigle, born December 4, 1900, is the son of Oscar Daigle and Eliza Landry and the 6th of 17 children. Father Daigle spent the first 2 years of his career in Baltimore, Md. and the final four he studied in Rome. He boasted that all of his professors went on to become Cardinals. Father Jules Daigle, who was ordained at the Vatican in 1926, returned to Louisiana where his sermons in Cajun French drew overflow crowds. After 48 years as a priest, he retired in 1974 and began a writing career. By 1984, using his own money, he published his 600 page dictionary which immediately became a best seller and supported many charities. His influence has spawned successful education programs teaching French to South Louisiana's children and adults even after his death on January 2, 1998.

He was also the author of a book called Cajun Self-Taught. Apparently, he was fluent in eight languages and a main proponent of the preservation of Cajun French. He certainly had some acerbic things to say about topics such as "Is Cajun bad French or just different French?" and "Other myths about the Cajun language". He had earned the right to be cantankerous, for he states in the introduction that he has been using the language for 84 years.

On the backside of the front cover in what I think is my grandfather's handwriting is his and my grandmother's names and their address. They must have purchased this somewhat close to the end of my grandfather's life, for the address indicates that it was after they had sold their house and moved closer to my mother so that she could care for them as they grew infirm.

I was able to find one book review of Father Daigle's dictionary:
Mary Patricia Trenkle, The French Review, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Apr., 1986), pp. 836-837. Although Father Daigle was convinced that Cajun was a separate language from French based on a variety of factors such as vocabulary, question formation, the uses of après, donc, and voir, abbreviations and repetitions, Trenkle remains skeptical. I leave that matter to the experts in the field and those that like to smash their heads against the language versus dialect debates.

I've always regretted not having been taught Cajun French by my grandparents, especially after I started studying French in high school. They didn't teach it to their kids, but it wasn't until recently that I realized the stigma attached to speaking it from the beginning of the 20th century to about the 1970s. From the same page above that gave me that biographical information on Father Daigle:

The French language was once so dominant in Louisiana that official state documents were published in French and English. In 1898, the State Constitution provided that "the French language may be taught in those parishes and localities where the French language predominates". But in 1921, the Louisiana Constitution prohibited the teaching of French in public schools. Children were spanked for merely uttering French words on the school grounds.

It's been said that the stigma against Cajun French was because que ce n'est pas le bon francais, but the stigma must've been stronger than that, for my grandfather even went so far as to change the ending of his name, Babineaux, to an -o, Babino, to make the name appear more Italian. I'm uncertain when he did that, but my maternal aunt, being the maverick that she is, changed her name back to the original spelling several years ago. I should look and see if I can find the documentation for the spelling change of his name. I'll have some more posts about this kind of stigmatization later.

I'm sure my sister will hold onto the dictionary. It doesn't look used at all, but I'm sure my grandfather and grandmother had little need of it, except as a reminder of their heritage and to honor Father Daigle.

"I'll write you once from Knoxville..."

Title is courtesy of some of my favorite lyrics from the song, "New York City Isn't Going Anywhere" by The Star Room Boys. This song resonates with me every time I get homesick for the South.

Naturally enough, I'm currently in Knoxville visiting kinfolk where the big attraction this summer at the Knoxville Zoo is an albino alligator. I kid you not.

What's really humorous about all this is that the blurb from the website states that "Known for their pink eyes and rare white skin, white alligators are said to bring good luck to those who dare cast a gaze upon the majestic creature."

Who says that? Who writes ad copy for the Knoxville Zoo? And what's up with the fake Cajun phrase in the ad, "Look in dem eyes!"

Terrible when we all know that Cajuns would look at an albino alligator and think:
1) I sure like country fried gator tail
2) That gator there would made some nice boots

On the Buddhist Studies front it's currently like the Battle of Somme: lots of trenches dug but not a whole lotta movement.
I think from now on I'm going to be making war allusions to chart my progress. Or lack thereof. And so as not to pop a vein in frustration, I'll use pre-Korean War metaphors.