The kids have been with me on many jobs and this has been their primary exposure to the culture. It is one of the main reasons I started Bayou Roots and started playing more family-friendly places...so that they could hear Cajun music and language before they grew up. I had been playing a "cajun flavored" music (Louisiana's Kingfish) before that time that didn't have as many songs in French. Bayou Roots, whether they realize it yet or not, was my way of passing some the older stuff on to them...don't tell them that though! Before Bayou Roots, they hadn't heard me play in a band directly devoted to Cajun music...most of that had happened when they before they were born or when they were very young.

For the most part though, they are little "Americans" as Roy would say. (I mean no disrepect to our country, I love the USA) They are pretty much taken in by the glitz and glamor of pop culture. But I take hope in the Savoy "children's (Joel, Sarah, Wilson)" back story--It seems like I read that they started appreciating the Cajun scene more after they got away from home...before that time, they had sort of taken it for granted. Maybe my children will be like that too.

Point being--I am not sure my children realize what they have been exposed to all their lives...customs, language, music, etc. I know that I never realized that stuff in full until I moved away to the big city of Lake Charles--then I wanted to go back "home" to the farm in the country. You know you spend your whole youth trying to figure out how to get off the farm and after you do...you start missing the old life. At least that is how it was for me. The grass is always greener on the other side, as they say...

That's all we can do, expose them to it, try not to push them away from it, and hope for the best.

Like many, I didnt really appreciate it until I had moved away. I was always interested, but took it for granted. It never occured to me years ago that things would be disappearing. Now my kids are growing up Texans, with a Texas accent, and though I expose them as much as I can, they consider themselves outsiders. They are having to learn some French, there are some things I only say to them in French, but it is a drop in the bucket. Maybe someday they will come to be interested. My biggest hope is that my son in interested in music in a big way, now I just gotta aim it at Cajun music in a offhanded way and see what happens.

Bryan, don't give up. If that can be of encouragement, my wife was born in Quebec city, but her family moved to Halifax Nova Scotia when she was very young. Her father switched to English in the house, and they were in a total English environment outside (school, street, etc.). My wife always spoke to her family in English. Despite that complete English immersion, her mother (my mother in law) never stopped speaking to her in French, event her daughter always responded in English. When we met, my wife could barely speak French. However, the language was all in her brains.... We moved to Montreal (French environment) and we started speaking French at home.. within a few months, something in her brain unlocked and she became fully bilingual. Today (19 years later), one would be challenge to say what is her mother's tongue, when she speaks French or English.
So the moral is: Never give up and continue with your drops in the buckets, someday the bucket will fill up.
Maz

"Never give up and continue with your drops in the buckets, someday the bucket will fill up."

Now that should be patented Maz. Non, moi j'va jamais lacher la langage ou la couture.

S'long as them drops ain't tears! Ha! Yeah, Bryan -- looking forward to moving beyond this matrimonial month and getting back on track with another fine eve of chanky chankin' with ya. Which of course, includes some of your Francophication and Pearl pops with da foam on top! Sit tight... and pull right!

R!CK