{"id":2759,"date":"2021-02-04T18:21:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/?p=2759"},"modified":"2021-02-04T18:26:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:26:59","slug":"cajun-music-a-reflection-of-a-people-volume-ii-by-ann-savoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/04\/cajun-music-a-reflection-of-a-people-volume-ii-by-ann-savoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II by Ann Savoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 by Ann Savoy is out this month and we\u2019re spreading the good word about it on behalf of the Arhoolie Foundation. \u00a0We think John Wirt\u2019s recent interview with Ann for the Louisiana Advocate provides some great insight into the project that has been percolating for over 36 years and has now finally been realized.<\/p>\n

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Out of the box: Ann Savoy finally wraps up sequel to her 1984 classic Cajun music book<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

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BY JOHN WIRT \/ Contributing writer<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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HOLLYWOOD (Perfect Music Today) 2\/4\/21\/–Ann Savoy has completed the long-awaited second volume of her landmark book,\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People.<\/i>\u00a0A Grammy-nominated musician, writer and photographer in Eunice, Savoy\u00a0published the first volume of her now two-part compendium of Cajun\u00a0 music and culture in 1984. She continued gathering material for the second volume until the early 1990s, when family responsibilities and her music-making compelled her to put the time-consuming book work aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was touring, I had four children and I was making a bunch of records,\u201d Savoy said last week. \u201cIt was crazy. So, I put the book in a box and thought, \u2018My kids can finish this.\u2019 \u201dSavoy\u2019s now grown children \u2014 including Cajun musicians Joel, Wilson and Sarah \u2014 and their friends later encouraged her to complete\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II.\u00a0<\/i>\u201cThey said, \u2018You have to get that out of the box.\u2019 And they helped me get it going again. It was a major project, as you can imagine when you see how huge it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Exhaustive though the two volumes of\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People\u00a0<\/i>are, Savoy never intended them to be definitive accounts of Cajun, Creole and zydeco music.\u201cThey contain musicians whose music I personally love,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt\u2019s not a reflection of who the most important artists are. And I don\u2019t put modern people in there, except a couple of Creole and zydeco guys. I usually don\u2019t put any young people in my books. That\u2019s kind of the rule. I\u2019m documenting the old folks, the ones who created the music and made it what it is. The power in the traditional Cajun music is what I like.\u201d<\/p>\n

A native of Richmond, Virginia, Savoy moved to Louisiana in 1977 following her marriage to musician and accordion maker Marc Savoy. His Savoy Music Center in Eunice, a gathering place for Cajun musicians since the 1960s, became ground zero for her musical and cultural explorations. \u201cThe great artists would be at Marc\u2019s music store,\u201d she said. \u201cI would hang out there, meet the musicians and set up appointments to go interview them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally, Savoy planned to publish a songbook only, albeit featuring French and English lyrics plus phonetic spellings for the French pronunciations. \u201cI was doing that to show Americans what the Cajuns were saying,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when I started visiting the musicians, they were so fascinating. And they had all of these cool photos. I thought, \u2018This has got to be bigger.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Along with musical scores, lyrics and photos, both volumes feature oral histories straight from the musicians. \u201cI like to hear their voices,\u201d Savoy said. \u201cI like the words they choose and their humor. And the way a person speaks tells a lot about their culture and the way they see the world.\u201d Savoy published volume one of\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People<\/i>\u00a0through her own Bluebird Press. \u201cBecause I wanted total control,\u201d she said of taking the self-published route. \u201cI wanted the book to look exactly how I wanted it to look. I like a big format, big photos. And I didn\u2019t want a publisher to group all of the photos in one section.\u201d<\/p>\n

The musician subjects in volume one attended the book\u2019s launch party. It was such a historic cultural event that folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet told Savoy, \u201cIf this building burns down today, the Cajun culture will be dead.\u201d Proving internationally popular, the 444-page volume one captured the American Folklore Society\u2019s Botkin Book Award. A review in The Washington Post cited it as \u201cperhaps the most comprehensive and stunning portrait of this music ever written. \u2026 Savoy\u2019s highly emphatic approach avoids the folklorists\u2019 stumbling block; that is, the tendency of scholarly outsiders to embalm folk cultures in intellectual and romantic vapors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople all over the world have it,\u201d Savoy said. \u201cThey call it the Cajun bible. I\u2019m not bragging. It just happens to be that everybody who likes Cajun music likes this book.\u201d Savoy also realized that everyone who bought volume one, which has sold 15,000 copies, would want volume two.\u201cEvery festival I\u2019d go to, people asked when volume two was coming out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Not performing this year during the coronavirus pandemic gave Savoy time to finally complete\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II<\/i>. \u201cThe pandemic is the only reason I finished,\u201d she admitted. \u201cBecause I travel so much, I would never have stayed home to do this. So, it\u2019s been really rewarding being home and completing this massive project that I\u2019ve been trying to finish forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 436-page second volume of\u00a0Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People\u00a0<\/i>is available for preorder at\u00a0annsavoy.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0savoymusiccenter.com<\/a>. The softcover edition is $45 and limited hardcover edition is $70.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Michael Hepworth<\/p>\n

287 S.Robertson Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211<\/p>\n

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  Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II\u00a0 by Ann Savoy is out this month and we\u2019re spreading the good word about it on behalf of the Arhoolie Foundation. \u00a0We think John Wirt\u2019s… <\/p>\n

Continue Reading Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People, Volume II by Ann Savoy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1481,1479,1480],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2759"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectmusictoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}