CAJUN FESTIVAL BRINGS SOUTHERN SPICE TO L.A.

It might be a long way from La. to L.A., but Saturday’s opening of the two-day Cajun and Zydeco Festival at the John Anson Ford Theatre captured all the good-time spirit of the Louisiana-based music.

The program also offered an authentic sampling of some of Cajun music’s best performers. John Delafose, who closed Saturday’s seven-group lineup, played a soulfully rhythmic brand of accordion-flavored zydeco as dark as the waters in the Bayou Teche.

At times resembling early Bo Diddley in its hypnotic urgency, Delafose’s music was brightened by amazing scrub-board playing by the leader’s 11-year-old nephew. It was a set for nonstop dancing.

If there is one Cajun band capable of reaching a mass audience, it’s Beausoleil. Led by master fiddler (and music historian) Michael Doucet, the seven-member group (which uses conga drums and saxophone, instruments not usually found in Cajun music) incorporated everything from French waltzes to country hoedowns to even a tinge of rock ‘n’ roll.

Though the lyrics were primarily in Acadian French, the group’s exuberant way of transforming a regional musical style into a universal musical language puts it on a par with a group like Los Lobos. In other words: great American music.

Doucet also played with master accordion maker Marc Savoy in the more traditionally oriented Savoy-Doucet group. Ann Savoy, playing rhythm guitar and singing with the untutored emotion of Cajun music’s best known female singer, Cleoma Falcoln, added a gracefully sweet counterpoint to her husband’s nimble-fingered passages and Doucet’s beautifully fluid fiddling.