Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Dewey Balfa was important in movement to save Cajun music

Music was part of Balfa family tradition

by Jim Bradshaw

Dewey Balfa was born in Mamou on March 20, 1927, and began playing music with his family at a young age. He and his brothers formed the Balfa Brothers band in the 1940s and played in south Louisiana.

In the early 1960s, Dewey gained national recognition and established himself as one of the most important figures in the movement to preserve the Louisiana French music and culture.

Dewey's father, Charles Balfa, was a sharecropper in Bayou Grand Louis near Mamou in rural Evangeline Parish. He loved music and passed that love on to his children, Will, Burkeman, Dewey, Harry, and Rodney. As children they were encouraged to play whatever instruments they could. Soon enough, the Balfa Brothers began playing together for family gatherings and house dances.

In 1964, Dewey served as a last-minute replacement on guitar to accompany accordion player Gladius Thibodeaux and Louis (Vinesse) Lejeune at the Newport Folk Festival. Dewey told the story of that first festival appearance in Barry Jean Ancelet's book, "The Makers of Cajun Music."

"I had no idea what a festival was," Dewey said. "They were talking about workshops, about concerts, and I didn't have the slightest idea what those were. I've always loved to play music as a pastime. I've always looked on music as a universal language. You can communicate with a whole audience at one time. But then, here I was going to Newport, Rhode Island, for a festival. I had played in house dances, family gatherings, maybe a dance hall where you might have seen as many as two hundred people at once. In fact, I doubt that I had ever seen two hundred people at once. And in Newport there were seventeen thousand. Seventeen thousand people who wouldn't let us off the stage."

In 1967, the entire Balfa Brothers band was invited to the Newport Folk Festival and, as a result of that experience, they were invited to play at festivals across the United States, Canada, and in France. The group included Dewey and Will on fiddles, Rodney on guitar, Rodney's son Tony on drums or bass, and sometimes Harry or Burkeman on triangle. Various accordion players accompanied them on tour, including Nathan Abshire, Marc Savoy, Hadley Fontenot, Robert Jardell, and Ally Young.

In 1978, Will and Rodney were killed in an automobile accident near Bunkie in Avoyelles Parish. However, Dewey continued to play and to promote the music he loved.

In an interview for a 1980 BBC Radio series, he talked about his feeling for the music. "In Cajun music you can hear the lonesome sound and the hurt (of the poor white man) from the Appalachian coal mines and so on, just like the blues sound of the black man is a sound of deep hurt, deep sorrow. The Acadians had it very tough from Nova Scotia down to Louisiana, and when they did get to Louisiana they had a hard time. And sometimes I feel that the Cajun sounds are of the loneliness and hardship they had back then."

In 1982 Dewey was presented the National Heritage Award by the National Endowment for the Arts.

He recorded memorable songs such as "Drunkard's Sorrow Waltz" and "Parlez-nous à boire" and was nominated for a Grammy in 1986. He taught courses about Cajun music and, in 1988, was appointed adjunct professor of Cajun music at USL. He died on June 17, 1992.