Bobby Ardoin Editor/Consulting Writer
It would have been easy for those in the audience Saturday to imagine themselves resting on the front porch shade of a Cajun Prairie farmhouse, watching their neighbors two-stepping as accordionists played traditional French music.
Providing reality for that experience at the St. Landry Parish Tourist Center were new generation members of the extensive Amede Ardoin family tree, whose impactful influence on Cajun and Creole music apparently runs strong nearly a century later.
Mark Ardoin, pressing notes down on the same type of one row accordion used by great, great uncle Amede and Alphonse Ardoin, a great grandson of Amede Ardoin nephew Bois Sec Ardoin, highlighted a veteran all-star-member Capital City Jam session that lasted well over two hours.
With acoustic guitarist Don Fontenot, bassist Alphonse Ardoin and washboard percussionist Cliff Leday driving the rhythm and Bridgit Murphy accompanying nearby on the Cajun fiddle, the Ardoin-accented concert provided the same type of Cajun and Creole authenticity their ancestor once provided in Acadia, St. Landry and Evangeline parish dance halls and house dances..
Amede Ardoin, whose high-pitched voice nourished his ballads and waltzes performed during the first three decades of the 2oth century, was saluted on Saturday by several of the songs played by his descendants.
Mark Ardoin, a working truck driver from Allen Parish, whose young daughter Adleigh also performed on the washboard and accordion, said there were numerous Amede Ardoin songs performed and mixed with other recognizable blues and waltzes that Fontenot, Mark Ardoin and Leday sang in Cajun French.
Occasionally the musicians interspersed the traditional songs with accordion-inspired modern songs, but the theme remained punctuated with others that have been played for audiences during past decades.
The jam session repertoire of the group was also extensive, but each musician appeared familiar with all the songs, a dynamic which enabled them to move effortlessly through a playlist that consumed much of the afternoon.
“I thought we had a great mixture. There were some songs that were written and sung by Amede during his career, but there were also more that he did that we didn’t get to do,” said Mark Ardoin.
Fontenot said his French musical dialect was cultivated during the past 30 years, as he led Cajun bands at Mamou’s Fred Lounge.
“When you’re playing Fred’s on a Saturday morning, it’s pretty much going to be in French. I picked up a lot of it by going to jam sessions and listening to Cajun songs and singing,” Fontenot said afterward.
The event which drew a reasonably-sized crowd as the afternoon proceeded, evolved into an impromptu Ardoin reunion, as Ardoin pointed out various cousins and in-laws who entered at different times inside the tourist center during the performance.
Some of those Ardoin relatives attending on Saturday, originally resided in the Duralde region between Eunice and Mamou, the same area where Amede Ardoin was born and lived until his death in 1942.
