The brash blasts of the accordion, the shuffle of feet, the wailing vocals in old French... The sound of Cajun music is well known through the United States and abroad. But for Louisiana-based band The Revelers, it’s just the start of the story. Headquartered in the city of Lafayette in Southwest Louisiana’s Cajun Country (New Orleans is home to jazz, but not a native home to Cajun music), the band is dedicated to the “holy trinity” of Cajun culture: hot music, all-night dancing, and great food. But they’re determined to explore the larger world of Louisiana music as well, and with their new album, The End of the River (Au bout de la rivière), they’re tapping into their deep lifetimes of knowledge of Swamp Pop, Zydeco, and old-school Louisiana dancehall music. They’ve synthesized all of these different traditions into a new sound, their own sound. “This is our arrival record,” says saxophonist and arranger The Chris Miller. “This band started by searching for a sound that incorporated a lot of ideas. Now the process of writing songs is a much more cohesive process. We know what the Revelers sound is!” Each member contributes to that Revelers sound, from Cajun prodigy Blake Miller, whose Cajun French songwriting and accordion playing is revered among today’s players, to drummer Glenn Fields who’s equally at home playing French Congolese music as he is Cajun honky-tonk. Guitarist Chas Justus brings a deep love for the backbeats and backroads of Louisiana swamp pop, bassist Trey Boudreaux was born in Lafayette but came up in New York’s jazz scene, and fiddler Daniel Coolik is steeped in the old Cajun twin fiddle tradition. Saxophonist Miller arranges the various parts into a whole, and came up with the novel idea of treating the accordion, fiddle, and saxophone as an ersatz brass section, a sound harkening back to Louisiana soul. No other band on the circuit today can bring all of the many threads of Louisiana music together, generate an entirely new sound, and still remain a driving force on the dancefloor and in the culture.
Lafayette, Louisiana, has always been a cultural nexus point. Cajuns and Creoles (French speaking African-Americans) from the area recorded some of the earliest racially integrated music in the nation. In fact, both Cajun and Zydeco owe most of their musical DNA to the pairing of white Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee and black Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin in the 1920s. In the 1950s, Zydeco broke off from the tradition with originator Clifton Chenier, himself from down the road in Opelousas. Chenier came from R&B and blues, and both of these threads lie at the heart of The Revelers music. The band’s always paid homage to Zydeco and the new album features rubboard player Paul “Bird” Edwards, who played drums for Clifton back in the day. Cajuns in the 50s loved R&B too, but they mixed it up with country, rock ‘n’ roll, and old French, creating swamp pop. Mixing a skittering backbeat with honky-tonk piano and a deep love for Hank Williams and Chuck Berry, swamp pop charted in the Billboard charts before the British Invasion, but is little known today. For The Revelers, swamp pop and Zydeco are two sides of the same coin. As accordionist/songwriter Blake Miller describes it: “Swamp pop and Zydeco come from Cajuns and Creoles integrating the sounds of blues, R&B, and rock and roll in the 1950's. French bands turned into blues and rock bands, and then back again before the dance floor could even empty. No one even noticed. It was all the same.”
As GRAMMY nominated artists, The Revelers take their role as cultural ambassadors to Lafayette seriously. And they understand that the music can’t be taken out of its context. That’s partly why they started the Blackpot Festival in Lafayette. Bringing together foodway traditions with music and dancing, Blackpot has become a cultural Mecca for two new generations of traditional artists. With a week-long teaching camp leading up to a weekend of festivities, The Revelers hold court as the house band and head cultural crusaders. Everywhere they play in the world, The Revelers invite their audiences to come out to Lafayette to experience the culture in person. To The Revelers, this is authentic American music, drawn from the many cultures that ended up in Louisiana, sometimes against their will. It’s triumph from tragedy, it’s the heart of the blues. It’s more than another sweaty night on the dance floor, it’s a way of life.