BeauSoleil - Band History

Band History

Founded in 1975, BeauSoleil (often billed as "BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet") released its first album in 1977 and became one of the most well-known bands performing traditional and original music rooted in the folk tunes of the creole and Cajun people of Louisiana. BeauSoleil tours extensively in the U.S. and internationally. While its repertoire includes hundreds of traditional Cajun and zydeco songs, BeauSoleil has also pushed past constraints of purely traditional instrumentation, rhythm, and lyrics of Louisiana folk music, incorporating elements of rock-and-roll, jazz, blues, calypso, and other genres in original compositions and reworkings of traditional tunes. Lyrics on BeauSoleil recordings are sung in English or Cajun French (and sometimes both in one song).

According to the band's web site, BeauSoleil's musicians "take the rich Cajun traditions of Louisiana and artfully blend elements of zydeco, New Orleans jazz, Tex-Mex, country, blues and more into a satisfying musical recipe."

The band's name is a tribute to Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, the leader of the Acadian resistance to British deportation efforts beginning in 1755. Broussard led the attack against Dartmouth Nova Scotia, in what would become known as the "Dartmouth Massacre". Beausoleil was eventually captured, but following his imprisonment managed to lead 193 exiles to Louisiana before he died in 1765.

BeauSoleil has appeared on soundtracks to films The Big Easy, Passion Fish and Belizaire the Cajun. The group plays at jazz and folk festivals and has appeared on numerous television shows, including CNN's Showbiz Today, Austin City Limits, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Emeril Live. BeauSoleil appears regularly on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio show. Keillor has hailed the group as the "best Cajun band in the world". BeauSoleil has also performed in concert with Mary Chapin Carpenter and opened for the Grateful Dead.

Although Michael Doucet did not originally intend to pursue performing Cajun music, a turning point came when Doucet was awarded a Folk Arts Apprenticeship by the National Endowment for the Arts. "I had planned to go to graduate school in New Mexico to study the Romantic poets," he recalls on the Vanguard Records web site. "Instead I traded William Blake for Dewey Balfa." Doucet sought out every surviving Cajun musician, including Balfa, Dennis McGee, Sady Courville, Luderin Darbone, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, Freeman Fontenot and others. He studied their techniques and songs and encouraged some to resume public performances.