BeauSoleil - Le Chanky Chank Francais

By capitalizing the "S" in the middle of BeauSoleil, the Cajun band's name becomes beautiful sun, but the truth is the band is named for an Acadian resistance fighter. Joseph Broussard Beausoleil fought the English in the mid-1700s during what is known as The Great Upheaval (or Le Grand Dérangement), when a British governor removed 10,000 French Acadians living in Nova Scotia from their homes by force. A number of them ended up in Louisiana. Living in the backwoods and bayous, they managed to hold onto at least some of their Acadian/Cajun culture through the years.
You could describe BeauSoleil fiddler Michael Doucet as a keeper of the Cajun flame, but he's more than that. Doucet's name came up in a story by Joel Selvin in last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle "Pink Section" about East Bay record store/record company owner Chris Strachwitz. Doucet recorded a number of albums for Strachwitz' label, Arhoolie, some with accordionist Marc Savoy as the Savoy/Doucet Cajun Band, and some under the BeauSoleil name. "He's really a folk artist," said Strachwitz, describing Doucet. "I know he's trying to be a zydeco musician, but I think his real tour-de-force is being a folk singer ... He's an amazing guy."

Strachwitz calls BeauSoleil his "rock band" because what they do is not always strictly Cajun folk music. While he's maintaining a tradition, Doucet is not some traditionalist resistance fighter. He also embraces change and you hear it in his music. As Strachwitz noted, the band includes zydeco elements, but also tasty bits of jazz, blues, funk, calypso — whatever fits. Doucet put it this way in the liner notes to the band's latest, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet: Live in Louisiana: "Cajun music will continue and continue to influence other forms of music while being influenced by the passage of time and trends. I look forward to the changes."

North Coast Journal
January 17, 2008
by Bob Doran

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