| Farewell Buffalo Jambalya
Oct 12, 2009 01:04:32 AM, dancingmike@VERIZON.NET wrote:
An old friend has passed away.
I found Buffalo on the Bayou with the help of Barbara Davenport in 1989. I had heard Cajun music and seen it played before, and that spring actually "experienced" it at my first Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans. Well, let's just say I was "among" real Cajuns for the first time. I later was in sensual overload at the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival with an unbelievably good collection of French musicians from many locations, including The Lawtell Playboys, Dewey Balfa and an astonishing group of musicians from Quebec, led by Marcel Messervier. It was there I got the flier for the Cajun weekend at Buffalo Gap.
At camp I discovered that I "got" Cajun dancing and it most certainly "got" me. I was thunderstruck by Cajun dancing and remain so to this day. I've wandered across the country and in all sorts of venues within a several hour drive from the DC/Baltimore area. In the first few years we found it pretty easy to gather a crowd of dancers and trek for hours to catch a band (sometimes of dubious quality) for a few hours fix of Cajun dancing. All sorts of venues opened up for the crowds of Cajun dancers luring bands from Louisiana up here. I remember well the shivering Cajun musicians who came up those first few winters in their "winter" jackets. I recall seeing a photo of snow at our Cajun dance teacher's house. "That's the time it snowed". Lots of those touring musicians headed home with gifted winter coats.
That first year we had the first "road" trip for Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. They would return many times over the first few years and they returned to help the camp, now renamed Buffalo Jambalaya and at a new venue in Darlington. MD, to celebrate both their and the camp's 20th anniversary. For dancing we had the world's best Cajun dance teacher, Miriam Fontenot. Miriam returned for many years. In the interim times we had excellent local teachers, Mark Greenleaf and Chris Trahan, the latter a transplanted Cajun from Lafayette, LA. Ben and Debbie and Mike and Sharon, two of the best Cajun/Zydeco dance teaching duos on the world are local to the DC area! They and many of the other best Cajun and Zydeco teachers in the world have graced the floors of the camp.
The DC/Baltimore area quickly became the top spot outside Louisiana for Cajun and Zydeco dancing. And before I get a torrent of dissent, I should say we became the top spot without a Cajun or Creole "outpost". Through Cajun and Zydeco dancing I made friends with people from ll over the country. I've danced many times with Creole folks in Los Angeles and in Texas and with Cajuns in Richmond and Alameda, both in the San Francisco area.
Over the 21 years of Buffalo on the Bayou and Buffalo Jambalaya there have been almost too many great bands to count. I certainly can't count them all. How do I point at the ones I liked best? Probably by assessing the way I felt at the end of the weekend. I never wanted the weekend to be finished, but after some I was just walking -- dancing, actually -- on air. My first year was the best, as it literally changed my life. On the other hand, I had a pesky problem after the camp that led to my getting a lot of kidding from friends. Back in 1989 the Cajun two-steps were the Cajun Jig and required an ongoing "pony" step. Exercising my clearly underutilized muscles with that step all weekend gave me quite the surprise at the end of my drive home -- my legs didn't work. Well, they did, but only under great duress. But I only limped for a week and then I kept those muscles well toned for
nearly twenty or so years.
For a couple years there were two Cajun weekends, the fall weekend combining Cajun and Country music. The first year the bands and dancers mixed like oil and water -- maybe not that good, actually. The second year Jean and Mitchell got The Texas Playboys. Here were musicians who played with the legendary Bob Wills, and these old guys could play!!!!! The third year of the annual camp brought Zydeco music and the great John Delafose to Buffalo Gap. He had this kid with a ten-million dollar smile playing drums for him. Geno went on to become the hottest Zydeco band leader in the world. My favorite memory is of the last year John played for us. He was giving Geno lots of front time on the accordion and scratching away on a fiddle Canray-style. I've never seen a prouder poppa -- any prouder and he'd have exploded. The years sort of run together, but I think maybe the great Basin Brothers played with him one year, the band before the tragic death of Tommy Comeaux and Errol Verret's leaving to stay with his ailing wife. Al Berard was into every aspect of camp, including cooking up a pot of gumbo. And how can I forget how the Savoy Family Band blew us all away -- magical to the max!
The best part of camp was, of course, the dancers. I can't begin to count the number of "dance impaired" people who came in on Friday (later Thursday) and danced all the way home on Sunday. The camp has always been a magic place, especially since the dance pavilion was built. Prior to that Buffalo Gap could have doubled as a weight loss center with dancing in the Swisher sweat box. I made friends I'll keep for the rest of my life at camp -- also with people I danced with around the country. And we BG campers were highly sought after dance partners because our teachers were the best and we got one hell of a lot of practice. We were doing Zydeco dancing in New Orleans a couple years ahead of the locals. I'd go to The Maple Leaf for Rockin' Dopsie's Thursday night gig and have to dance with the Creole girls because the others were doing the Cajun Jig. Ha, we DC/Baltimore dancers thought we were hot stuff!! Kudos to Michael Seider for teaching New Orleans dancers to Zydeco!
I was a volunteer for most of the twenty-one years of camp. I helped Jean find Willis Prudhomme when John was "bought out" from under her and recommended Bruce Daigrepont, whose band played for camp more than any others. He started the singing workshops and was probably the best "fit" for camp. No other band loved Buffalo Gap more than his. He loved hiking the mountains, quite the contrast from his native Louisiana where the two highest spots were a couple of little bumps called salt domes south of Lafayette. I always wished we could have had a camp with both Willis and Al Berard, the two people who had their noses in every aspect of camp. We could have had a feature event with them fighting over who cooked the best gumbo!
For years the camp depended on a strong director to get things done. There was always a group of volunteers, but always the "strong" leader. Jean and Kass were great for years, but eventually they simply burned out -- it was a lot of work! When a new group took over the camp a new spirit of cooperative leadership moved in. There was certainly a need for a director, but things started getting done by consensus rather than by decree. It took a couple years of shaking out, but what came out was a group with the singular focus of making a great camp. And that's a lot tougher than you'd think. Many camps survive because the talent is local, but a truly good Cajun/Zydceo camp requires importing bands that cost considerably more than those of other camps. And then there's the food. I'll never forget the look on the commitee's faces when Linda and I told them we hired Chef Mike to cook for us -- and I'll never forget the applause for him the first year he cooked for us. I thought the noise was going to blow the roof off Buffalo Gap's dining hall. It only got better after the move to Maryland because Camp Ramblewood has a resident kitchen staff that made the work easier for Chef Mike. He had the time to make desserts -- I would kill for a slice of his bread pudding! Curse those infernal Frenchmen for hiring him away from us!!
I was the only person who attended all 21 of the camps, from 1989 through 2009. Seeing it go is like losing a best friend. I volunteered in a variety of capacities over all of the camps, some more involved than others. A few years ago my legs started giving out on me and I just couldn't keep up. My involvement had to be reduced. Well, I was at retirement age anyway, so why not clear out to make way for the younger folks. I did treasure the opportunity to host the culture corners, though. Paul and the committee did a marvelous job of keeping the camp together in a very tough economic climate and I think they deserve a final round of applause for a job exceptionally well done.
As for me, I'm buying extra Lottery tickets in the hope of hitting it big so I can donate a shitload of money to BFMS and the Buffalo Jambalaya committee in the hope this wonderful, magical weekend can rise again from the rubble of our battered economy. I think many thanks go to Jean and Kass for their years of camp directorship and to "The Committee" for holding it together for so long under tough circumstances. Special thanks to Jim Newburg for buying Buffalo Gap Camp after the bankruptcy and hanging in there so long while taking a financial loss. Somehow, I always thought Jim liked our camp the best -- especially after we hired Chef Mike. Many of the best memories of my life are wrapped in the glow of weekends at Buffalo on the Bayou and Buffalo Jambalaya. It probably won't become truly real to me that it's over until I go through the summer of 2010 without Buffalo Jambalaya.
I think it would be a fitting tribute to the camp if all of us could dig out our camp T-shirts and wear them on Saturday (Sunday, too) during the Glen Echo Festival this coming weekend. It would be a nice gesture to have any members of the committee in attendance be recognized during a break for their service to the dance community.
Mike Baker
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