Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Dances: from bals de maison to the fais-dodo

by Jim Bradshaw

Dances played an important role in Acadian social life well before the Acadians got to Louisiana. Above all, modem Cajun music is meant for dancing, and much of the older music was, too.

Barry Jean Ancelet in his study, "Cajun Music: Origins and Developments," notes, "Descriptions of Acadians at the time of the dispersion invariably mention their insatiable love of dancing. In a letter ... dated March 12, 1764 (a government official) described a ... wedding and baptism blessing ceremony among the Acadian exiles in Saint-Domingue: 'They did not eat until every one had given his toast. They danced, the old and the young alike, all dancing to a fast step.'"

Thus, it should raise no eyebrows that once the Acadians were settled in Louisiana, one of their most popular forms of entertainment and most important social gatherings were les bals de maison (house dances).

French writer C.C. Robin traveled through Louisiana from 1803 to 1805. He told us that the Acadians loved to dance more than anything else and more than anyone else in the colony.

"At one time during the year," Robin recounted, "they give balls for travelers and will go ten or fifteen leagues to attend one. Everyone dances, even grandmère and grandpère, no matter what the difficulties they must beat. There may be only four candles for light, placed on wooden arms attached to the wall; nothing but long wooden benches to sit on and only exceptionally a few bottles of tafia (a rum-like drink) diluted with water for refreshments; no matter, everyone dances."

John Broven notes in his book, "South to Louisiana, The Music of the Cajun Bayous," "At the turn of the century, the Cajuns were performing a variety of European dances including the waltz, polka, reel, mazurka, and quadrille (known also as the contradanse), with music to match, but they gradually limited themselves to the ever-popular waltz and two-steps. Initially, dances were held at home -- usually in a front room cleared of furniture -- and were known as bals de maison."

During the 19th century, these bals de maison typically occurred each Saturday night. They were announced in the prairie regions by a young man on horseback waving a flag, which he then tied to the house where the dance was to be held. Sometimes, the messenger fired a gun before each house and hollered out the name of the host.

According to Lauren C. Post, author of "Cajun Sketches From the Prairies of Southwest Louisiana," "In the 'street village' form of settlement, where all the houses fronted the bayou, whoever was to give a dance merely stood on his front porch and shouted up and down the bayou, telling the neighbors to pass the word along. It was as effective as using a telephone, yet no one had to leave his own house. They say that by actual test, a message was sent for forty miles along Bayou Lafourche without anyone leaving his porch."

On arrival at the bal, Cajuns left young children in a bedroom designated le parc aux petits, then divided into groups with other dancers, according to age, sex, and marital status. Mothers guarded their adolescent daughters. Older men usually found the card game.

At the end of the dance, someone fired a shotgun and declared "Le bal est fini!"

Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee described a bal de maison to Broven. "Suppose I had a house," McGee said, "well they came and asked me to lend it for a hall. All right, I gave my consent. They rode around to invite young girls and at night they got together. Women sat down on benches they had made with blocks of wood and planks; they watched their daughters -- you know, in those days, a girl couldn't go out alone. ... The boy who had borrowed the house, he was the boss until the ball was through. He decided which couple to put together. He stood at the door and when a guy asked him to dance, he placed him. Sometimes he let him dance, sometimes not. ... Sometimes it was a large house, sometimes it was a small house. When it was big ... eight, sometimes twelve could dance. Your turn came back quick. When it was a small one, there was room for only six maybe. Your turn never came, it took too long and you couldn't have fun. You danced a country dance and a waltz and that was all."

In an interview with writer Rose-Marye Boudreaux, musician and fiddle-maker Adner Ortego recalled, "(In the 1920s) we'd beg (people) to loan us a house one night a week so we could have a dance. We'd have to go and crawl under the house and put some blocks so the floors wouldn't cave in. After the dance, we'd have to get the blocks out because the termites would get in there."

Even before Ortego's time, however, the dances were moving from people's houses to the fais-dodo, a term which can be used not only to describe the dance itself, but the hall it was held in.

Just as with the house dances, the fais-dodo was a family affair. Young children were put to bed at the dance, and told to fais dodo, which means "go to sleep." Adolescent girls attended under the watchful eyes of their mothers. Young men, when they were not dancing, were sometimes restricted to une cage aux chiens, which was designed partly to keep the young men and women separated, partly to contain the fights that often broke out as young love and liquor became too much to handle.

Some of the dance halls had chicken wire strung up in front of the band to protect the musicians from flying fists and flying bottles. Post tells us, "The little band of musicians made an essential part of any fais-dodo, yet they were not always safe from flying pop bottles. In a few of the rougher sections during the thirties it was customary to set the musicians up in a little elevated cage protected by chicken wire from the bottles and other missiles, so that they could play any kind of music they chose to play. It seems that one of the main causes of trouble was the all-important choice of music to be played.

Many a fight was started by a dispute over whether a waltz or a two-step should be played."

As the fais-dodo grew in popularity, dance balls sprang up in even the most remote locations. Carroll Martin of Lafayette recalls, for example, that accordion player "Boy" Noël and a fiddle player used to pump their way on old railroad pushcars to Pelba and to Atchafalaya, which were floating communities in the middle of the Atchafalaya Swamp, to play Saturday and Sunday dances

Not all of the dance halls were impressive. Post writes in Cajun Sketches, "The fais-dodo as a building was far less impressive than the fais-dodo as an institution. It might be taken for a barn or a warehouse. It had a reasonably good pine floor, wooden benches all the way around, wooden shutters for the windows on all sides, and not much else except a room with a bed or two for babies, a card room for the men who were not dancing, and a refreshment stand."