Help Needed to Save Historic Cajun & Creole Recordings

This is a message I received from David Greely of the Mamou Playboys about a critical need to save historic Cajun & Creole recordings housed in the Archive of Cajun and Creole folklore at the University of Louisiana Dupré Library and how we fans of this music can help.  Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

Coup de Main for the Culture

In an effort to save and restore more than 1,800 recordings of Cajun and Creole music that span over a century, we are passing along an appeal for donations to all Cajun music fans.  Considered by musicians (including the Mamou Playboys, Zachary Richard, and Beausoleil among others) and scholars to be one of the most important audio collections in the world, hundreds of tapes in the Archive of Cajun and Creole folklore are in danger of permanent loss caused by aging and environmental damage.

The recordings were stored without climate control during three years of renovations on the University of Louisiana Dupré Library. Located on the uppermost floor of the library, the archive was subject to the full onslaught of several Louisiana summers, exacerbated by an unusual period of drought that denied even a few cooling rain clouds. Many recordings exist only on reel-to-reel tapes, some of which literally melted in their boxes. Others often fall apart as they are being re-recorded onto other media. The Archive's administration is doing the best it can: it recently won a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and has received some support from the University. But the undertaking is expensive and time consuming, and the few resources the Archive has are stretched as far as they can go.

Current efforts are focused on two primary goals: 1) capturing as many of the recordings as possible in their raw state, digitizing them as is for future conservation efforts, and 2) making compressed versions of the digitized files available to local and national musicians who visit the archive to hear for themselves these unique recordings. Once the collection has been recovered and stabilized, the Archive hopes to begin issuing a series of recordings to the wider public so that all who are interested can hear, for example, Dewey Balfa playing in his own living room.

Friends, this situation is bordering on tragic. With only volunteer labor and exhausted funding, John Laudun, Carl Brasseaux and Erik Charpentier are trying to save an irreplaceable treasure. These are field recordings of non-commercial Cajun and Creole music and storytelling dating back to the 1930s, when most of the performers were carrying forward music from the previous century. Most of the artists captured on tape in the Archive are long departed, and some of them can only be found in this Archive. It is a wealth of music and oral tradition that has never passed through the needle's eye of the record business, and it enables us to conceive the depth and breadth of our musical heritage.

We are asking for your help. The goal for this fundraising appeal is $50,000, which will allow the first primary goal to be achieved -- transferring the recordings from tape to digitized media. It would be a great help if all recipients of this newsletter could contribute $10 to this much-needed project.  

Tax-deductible financial contributions to the effort of saving the Archive can be made payable to Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, or CCET, and sent to:

Dr. Carl Brasseaux,Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 40199, Lafayette, LA 70504

For more information contact: John Laudun at laudun@louisiana.edu