Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion

Since 1955, when he was just 17, Marc Savoy has been producing the instrument that has become synonymous with Cajun music. Drawing on Savoy's life as an instrument builder, promoter, and patriarch of America's most famous Cajun musical family, Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion tells the story of this strong-minded artisan/businessman/musician who set out to make “the Cajun accordion,” learned to market it brilliantly, and sustained a tradition in spite of cultural stigma, setbacks, and change. It is Savoy's admirable achievement that he manages to celebrate many of the tactile, visual, musical, and cultural values inherent in making and playing these handmade instruments.Early chapters of the book chronicle Savoy's budding fascination with Cajun music, the rich traditional repertoire and playing style forged by French-speaking Acadian (the origin of the term “Cajun”) refugees from Canada who immigrated to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century. Savoy spent nearly every afternoon with elders who gathered at his grandparents’ home in Eunice, Louisiana, to play Cajun dance music on traditional instruments. He fell in love with the button accordion but couldn't find anyone to teach him how to play it or make one, so he fashioned one himself from discarded household items like tablecloths and toilet float rods. Later, his father bought him a Hohner squeezebox from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, but he found that the German instrument was not able to do things his fingers wanted to do to keep up with the dynamic rhythms of Cajun dance music. When Savoy was not playing his Hohner, he was disassembling and reassembling it to see how it worked. Upon hearing a pair of Creole accordionists playing at a party at a relative's house, Savoy had found his dream accordion, a Monarch made in Germany. He built a replica. That feat established his reputation as an ace accordion repairman at an age when most teenagers are just getting their driver's license. As word spread about the young prodigy, Savoy was developing specific ideas about what an ideal accordion's timbre, tone, and performance capacity should be. He also gave the Cajun boxes a glam makeover by replacing the austere black spray-painted exteriors with “beautiful, figured woods with a clear finish” (p. 23).As the Cajun accordion was evolving, so was the image of Cajun music. Dewey Balfa, Dio Leonard, and Savoy himself became the early pioneers of Cajun music. But for most of the American public, the Cajuns had been so isolated from mainstream culture that their music may as well have been “hidden behind a cultural Iron Curtain” (p. 43). Then came that watershed moment in 1964 when a Cajun band stunned audiences at the Newport Folk Festival. While surprising to the musicians themselves, their standing ovation—midway through their first song—confirmed what Savoy had always believed: that Cajun music was “very unique and special and that its potential as a tourist attraction was tremendous” (p. 43). He was about to make close contact with many more prominent Cajun musicians, get invited to Newport himself, and star in Les Blank's documentary on the Cajuns. By the 1970s, Savoy and many other musicians had taken Cajun music to “about every state in the union and around the world” (p. 60).It took longer for locals to embrace their own music. Exploring the current status of Cajun music, the uneven final chapter “A Look Back and a Step Forward” descends into angry scolding of fellow Louisianans (complete with an expletive) for becoming “stereotypical clone[s] of ‘Anywhere, USA’”: “You turned your back on a hot bowl of gumbo in favor of a cold, tasteless American hotdog. Now that Cajun culture attracts worldwide attention, you have decided to be Cajun also. That's fine but don't make a second mistake and try to take credit away from people who kept the torch lit when Cajun was a dirty word” (p. 82). Having steered the reader to issues of identity, revival, and culture loss, Savoy seems unwilling to explore them in a more nuanced way. It's a missed opportunity to shed light on the specialness of the music and the shifting meaning of the accordion as a Cajun cultural symbol. Indeed, Savoy's book is at its weakest when spinning out rhetoric against change and cultural assimilation.I had some other issues with Made in Louisiana. Readers less interested in handicraft will find the book tedious at times. That is partly because Savoy, like most successful makers, is a supreme perfectionist. The process he describes is slow, and the book illuminates the serial composition of accordions, instruments made of multiple materials and thousands of moving parts. On the other hand, those readers who are interested in getting “into the reeds” may be frustrated by the lack of specific information about how Savoy's innovations changed the sound of the instrument. Made in Louisiana is a missed opportunity to explore what makes the Savoy accordion the Cajun accordion, and to explore its musical and cultural value in greater depth.Finally, certain interposed sections, like the chapter on the creation of a national park in Eunice, may seem doggedly dull at times. These would have been more effective as sidebars. I found myself skipping over a lot of this material to pick up the threads of the amazing Savoy family saga. Readers will certainly be drawn to Ann Savoy (née Allen), a Virginia musician and music scholar whom Savoy introduced to traditional Cajun music. Ann became Marc's soulmate, bandmate, fellow author, and mother of four more Savoy musicians with musical careers of their own. Together, the couple realized Savoy's vision of a permanent home for Cajun music making (and major cultural tourism destination) when they opened the Savoy Music Center—a story to which Savoy devotes a full feel-good chapter.Made in Louisiana doesn't always work as a definitive history of “the Acadian accordion,” but it fills an important gap. It's also a very beautifully illustrated book that many visitors to the Savoy Music Center will want as a souvenir. Part memoir, part love story, and very much a labor of love, Made in Louisiana should be read as a singular product of Savoy's insights and his role in the rise of Cajun music.

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