The Louisiana French culture is a gumbo all its own, a collection of legacies, legends, and languages harmonizing together and kept alive through the music they inspired. An ambassador of that Cajun way of life is Jourdan Thibodeaux, proud son of Acadiana who has taken it upon himself to champion not just the history of his people but their spirit as well. Molded from his earliest days at the knee of his elders, where he could be found banging pencils against guitar strings to find his own unique sounds, Thibodeaux, alongside his band Les Rôdailleurs, performs original music in Cajun French with a raw veracity that belies simple categorization and forges a sensation as reverential of centuries past as it is prescient and personal.
“I’m different from a lot of people who write songs these days because I’m not worried about the reception, I’m just saying what I’m feeling,” explained Thibodeaux. “I try to be really direct and honest, though sometimes it’s weird because that means I’m basically singing my diary out in front of a thousand people.”
Artistry divorced from a desire for fame is felt in every song sung by Jourdan Thibodeaux et Les Rôdailleurs, each proudly wailed out amid thundering fiddle strings with a tenacity that feels as necessary as breathing. Though some of the old timers might accuse his sound of being “not Cajun enough,” Thibodeaux knows the iterative nature of music is its ultimate power, allowing it to evolve and adapt to the age it exists within while retaining its ability to bind the generations together.
“At the end of the day, what makes music Cajun? Is it the accordion? It can’t be because we had Cajun music a long time before we had an accordion. It’s Cajun because it’s made by me. My life is the source,” Thibodeaux said. “That’s all those guys from years ago were doing, singing how they felt day to day: ‘today was terrible, it was hot, my heart got crippled, but whatever, we’re gonna get drunk.’ It wasn’t about writing hits or trying to be poets; they were singing about their lives.”
An acolyte of “selling the truth” as a matter of principle, the bilingual nature of Jourdan’s heritage has had a profound effect not only on his music but in his perspective on the world at large. The ancestral Acadian people, exiled from Canada and forced into Spanish-controlled Louisiana as refugees, were able to carry on their culture through the music they shared and the support of communities that welcomed them with open arms. Jourdan Thibodeaux et Les Rôdailleurs’ music fosters within its seams that revolutionary defiance of a people who refused to be eradicated from the world, despite the best efforts of despots and racists. As a part of his wide-reaching social media presence, Thibodeaux recently took to Instagram to lay out the ways that his own family’s experience of unlawful exclusion from their adopted country is similar to that of undocumented residents being incarcerated by ICE. A non-partisan and earnest expression of unbridled empathy and faith, the post was celebrated by many but derided by some who were unable to see the mirroring of their own family histories with the atrocities of today; a phenomenon Thibodeaux believes can only be cured through honest communication and mutual respect.
“It’s easier to forget where you come from than it is to enjoy the privileges you’ve been given and try to provide the same for others,” Thibodeaux said. “So, when some people try to say that one situation is not the same as another, what line do you draw where you can start seeing a parallel in another human being? All people are just people trying to love and to be happy. But you can only get to that understanding by talking about it and being willing to stand up and speak when you don’t agree with what’s going on, even if that’s the hardest thing to do.”
While hard at work on his latest album with Les Rôdailleurs, performed and recorded within the cozy cypress confines of his two-hundred-year-old home, the time and space connection between the Cajun French language and culture, past and present, has assuredly found sanctuary in Thibodeaux’s music; born from an age-old recipe of love and feeling where truth is the most important ingredient of all.
Must-see performances this month
April 11 | Mei Simone’s, 8 p.m. at Tipitina’s, tipitinas.com.
April 22 | Band of Heathens, 10:30 p.m. at Chickie Wah Wah, chickiewahwah.com.
April 23 | Mt. Joy, 8 p.m. Champions Square at Caesars Superdome, caesarssuperdome.com.
April 24 | Samantha Fish, 8 p.m. at House of Blues, houseofblues.com.
April 28 | Dragon Smoke, 8 p.m. at Tipitina’s, tipitinas.com.
April 30 and May 1 | Wilco, 9 p.m. at the Saenger Theatre, wilcoworld.net.
April 30 | Lettuce, 10 p.m. at The Joy Theater, thejoytheater.com.
