Michel Doucet

Further Notes:

Subjects for Further Research [1980s]: I love New Olreans rock and roll and all its African-diaspora cousins, but not for the French in them--maybe for the Latin, or for the seaport, the city. I've always had trouble with the bayou blues called zydeco, and I've always had trouble with Cajun, which I hear (ignorantly and perhaps absurdly) as country music with a lot of Normandy in it--dance music in a variety of meters, and still I find the rhythms wearing. Near as I can tell, this man is the class of a genre now hellbent on raking in the Yankee dollar. I prefer his more traditional group, Beausoleil (try Arhoolie's Allons a Lafayette), to Cajun Brew, which goes up against rock-oriented contenders like Wayne Toups. Either way he's a hell of a violinist, and he has a gentle touch.