Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings

Vermilion Parish

256 Vermilion Parish Fenelon Brasseaux, Isaac Sonnier, and Cleveland Sonnier Cousins Fenelon Brasseaux and Isaac and Cleveland Sonnier of Erath performed a number of traditional French songs for the Lomaxes, mostly drinking and wedding songs. Popular singers at local wedding celebrations, the Brasseaux/Sonnier cousins perform songs that appear in accounts of traditional wedding rituals in rural France. Young men at the time of the recording, they also sing a bamboche—an indigenous Louisiana song of drunken wandering—that appears as well in the repertoire of the young Sta≠ord brothers of Crowley. S’il fait vaillant y Quand j’étais vaillant, j’aperçois ma maîtresse. Si je serais près d’elle, je lui ferais l’amour. Je suis dans ma chaumière, à bénir mon chagrin. —“O du chagrin,” dit-elle, “ne prenez donc pas tant. Vous avez des maîtresses, bien plus jolie que moi. Allez-vous en les voir, et retirez-vous de moi.” “Il faut je me retire. Je veux me retirer, Toi, tu n’es pas si belle, tu as tes vanités. J’estime mieux ma bouteille que toi dans tes beautés.” [When I was valiant, I saw my beloved. If I was near here, I would court her. Now I’m in my cabin, nursing my sorrow. “As for sorrow,” said she, “don’t take on so much of it. You have plenty of mistresses, much finer than me. Go and see them and withdraw from me!” “I must withdraw. I want to pull away. You’re not so pretty, and you have your vanities. I prefer my bottle to you and all your beauty.” vermilion parish 257 Buvons, chers camarades, abandonnons l’amour. Abandonnons les filles, nous les fréquenterons plus. Elles font leur di∞cile souvent elles ne sont pas. In this song a dejected gallant recounts the circumstance of his rejection and enjoins his friends to drink and forget the travails of love. Part of this occurs as a dialogue, which ends with the wounded speaker insisting that he loves his bottle more than her beauty—an insult that recalls the bitter comments made by the speaker of Julien Ho≠pauir ’s “Mademoiselle Emélie,” another song of rejection and drinking. Although exact analogues of this song are rare, it is close in most respects to the song printed as “Là-bas dans ces montagnes” in La Fleur du rosier, the main di≠erence being that the dejected suitor resolves not to drink his sorrows away but to become a hermit at the “couvent des Ursulines” (Creighton and Labelle 1988, 54). The opening line of this song ends with “là-bas dans ces vallons,” and “quand j’étais vaillante,” with vaillante a homonym for vallons, may have developed out of this older line, which is in turn a formulaic opening common to many vernacular pastourelles. In general this song has a hybrid character. Related to the older pastourelle/bergerade cycle in its initial lyric lines concerning a romantic meeting with the beloved, the dialogue in the middle of the song resembles more modern strophic parting/rejection songs. The last verse, meanwhile, is clearly drawn from the drinking tradition. The resulting text is something like an emergent cross between a pastourelle, chanson à boire, and strophic dialogue song—but one that seems to have coalesced into a traditional type known in Acadia and French Louisiana. A contemporary version of this song can be found in the anthology Allons Boire un Coup: A Collection of Cajun and Creole Drinking Songs, sung by Ann Savoy in a version based on the singing of Edius Naquin. Paysan, donne-moi ta fille y “Paysan, donc, donne-moi ta fille, voilà tout. (2x) “Donnez-moi la d’en haut, [priant.] Ça me rendrait la cœur content, Voilà tout.” (2x) “Non, non ma fille elle est trop jeune, Voilà tout. (2x) Let us drink, dear companions, and abandon love. Let us abandon women. We’ll court them no longer. They act di∞cult, but often they are not.] [“Peasant, give me your daughter, that’s all. “Bring her down to me from upstairs, I pray. It would make my heart happy, And that’s all.” “No, no, my daughter is too young, And that’s all. 258 traditional music in coastal louisiana “Faites lui l’amour encore un an, En attendant le temps passer. Voilà tout.” (2x) “Non non. L’amour...