Bayou Seco Take it One Culture At A Time by Dan Willging "What we try to do is get a glimpse into the soul of a culture" - accordionist Ken Keppeler of New Mexico’s Bayou Seco. For the past 20 years, Keppeler and his wife, fiddle player Jeanie McLerie, have been soul searching into folk cultures from the Louisiana bayous to the arroyos of New Mexico. Their initial immersion began in Eunice, Louisiana, during the late 70s, when McLerie and Keppeler lived behind musicians Marc and Ann Savoy’s house in a former buvette (a prohibition-era liquor storehouse). The lifestyle couldn’t be any more Cajun; McLerie and Keppeler played with everyone from Dennis McGee, Canray Fontenot and Dewey Balfa to early incarnations of Michael Doucet’s BeauSoleil. For a short time in 1980, McLerie was part of the original Magnolia Sisters with Ann Savoy and Jean Broussard. The “bon ton” came to an end for McLerie when a physician advised that the Louisiana ambiance of mold and mildew were detrimental to her allergies. But as one door closes, another one opens. This time it was opening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an attractive setting known for its dry climate and rich folk culture. It wasn’t long before they became known for their Cajun music and they met Bonnie Apodaca, who needed musicians for her folk dancing classes. The dances Apodaca taught were Spanish colonial dances, originating from Europe and brought to New Mexico in the late sixteenth century. “The Hispanic settlers brought them when they came up the Chihuahua trail (from Mexico),” said Keppeler. When the Santa Fe trail opened in 1821, the dances became integrated with Irish, German and Italian immigrants settling into northern New Mexico. The traditional dances Apodaca taught are group dances where men and women danced communally; the newer dances are couple dances. “Couple dancing is a recent phenomenon in the last two hundred years,” said Keppeler. “As couple dancing became popular, they were combined with group dances. The first half would be group dances; the second half would be couples dancing.” Inspired by the Cajun music’s revival, McLerie and Keppeler felt they should assist in propagating the indigenous Hispanic music and dance. “What I’ve seen happen is that when something becomes forgotten, the children of the players aren’t interested in it,” said Keppeler. “But by the time their grandchildren are, it’s oftentimes too late.” Although McLerie and Keppeler learned from many musicians through playing indigenous dance music, none were more well versed than Cleofes Ortiz, a fiddler from Bernal, New Mexico. Ortiz was significant in that, due to the area’s remoteness, he and other musicians had kept their tradition pure. Unlike Louisiana, where 78 r.p.m. recordings helped preserve a critical era of Cajun music, New Mexico’s music went unrecorded. As radio stations began playing norteño music, regional musicians incorporated those musical influences, thereby diluting the tradition. Luckily, none of the effects of modernization factored into Ortiz’s music. By 1981, McLerie and Keppeler moved to Albuquerque. There they presented Spanish colonial dance music at community events and included regional tunes in their Bayou Seco Cajun sets. Along the way they met Max and Antonia Apodaca, talented musicians from a long line of musical families of Rociada, New Mexico. Max Apodaca played guitar and fiddle while his wife, Antonia, played guitar and accordion. Antonia’s accordion style has been described as archaic, similar to the style that was popular in Europe at the turn of the century. “Antonia does a lot of old songs from that area,” said Keppeler. In the forties, the Apodacas moved to Wyoming and later, in the seventies, they returned to New Mexico. “Because Antonia was isolated from New Mexico, she retained all these old tunes,” continued Keppeler. “Lots of times if musicians aren’t isolated from their culture, they just keep getting more modern.” When Max passed away in 1989, Antonia became despondent and stopped playing. “It’s a custom that they don’t play for a year,” said McLerie. Recognizing that one of New Mexico’s living treasures could be lost forever, it was McLerie and Cleofes Ortiz who encouraged Antonia to resume playing. Besides promoting the Hispanic culture, McLerie and Keppeler were instrumental in helping Ortiz and Apodaca to receive widespread attention, more gigs, and even appearances at the Smithsonian Institute’s Festival of American Folklife. Both were named into New Mexico’s Artists in Residence program enabling them, along with Keppeler and McLerie, to present cultural programs throughout the state. Through McLerie and Keppeler’s efforts, local recordman Manny Rettinger recognized the cultural value of Apodaca’s and Ortiz’s music. Rettinger owns the Ubik label and recorded Apodaca’s Recuerdos de Rociada (“Memories of Rociada”) and Ortiz’s Orquesta Cleofonica without any outside financing. With Bayou Seco enlisted as supporting musicians, both releases capture what Apodaca and Ortiz represent culturally. On Recuerdos de Rociada, Apodaca performs tunes from her family repertoire, while Ortiz’s Orquesta Cleofonica focuses on endangered dance tunes such as La Escoba (“Broom Dance”) and La Cuna (“The Cradle”). Besides becoming ethnomusicologists of the Hispanic culture, McLerie and Keppeler learned the ancient Tohono O’odham Indian fiddle music from Elliott Johnson. The Tohono O’odham have been playing their traditional music for over 200 years, ever since the missionaries recruited the Native Americans of southeast Arizona (near Tucson) to play for their Catholic masses. Later they learned the Spaniards’ social dance music so the Spaniards could hold dances. As other musicians passed through, the Tohono O’odham picked up mazurkas, chotis, two-steps, and polkas as the style transformed into what is now know as “chicken scratch.” McLerie and Keppeler met Johnson at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, in 1991. Sensing that McLerie and Keppeler might be interested, Johnson inquired if they wanted to learn his music. “The Indians on the reservation were getting away from it,” said McLerie. “Oh, they still played it, but with accordions, electric guitars and saxophones. Elliott wanted us to learn the older twin fiddle style.” Keppeler described the Gu-achi music as unusual in that it’s not played in eight measure patterns like traditional folk music. Instead it’s often played in five, eleven, even seventeen measures and the harmonies have strange chord combinations. McLerie and Keppeler visited Johnson several times at his home in Cababi, Arizona, to learn his music. As a tribute to Johnson’s passing in 1993, McLerie, Keppeler and Bayou Seco mates Linda Askew and Scott Mathis made a recording of Johnson’s music, released in 1995 as Memories of Cababi on the Ubik label. During the same year, Bayou Seco released their first CD, Following In The Tuneprints, a fascinating collection of Cajun, New Mexican, chicken scratch and Western tunes. The cultural contributions have been many. Even though Ortiz and Johnson have since passed on, musicians as far away as Europe play their music. Later this year, McLerie and Keppeler will relocate to Silver City, New Mexico, to escape Albuquerque’s urban sprawl. But their musical activism will not stop there. For awhile now they have been interested in the music of the Yacqui people, a group of Indians living mainly in Sonora, Mexico. “We’re not going down there to look for people like this,” said Keppeler. “Because we’re interested, we often get encouraged. If nobody in their family is playing and somebody comes along that’s interested, they say, ‘Come more often.’” And then it will be another road leading to another destination of cultural enrichment. This is the full text from the current issue of Dirty Linen The Dirty Linen Pages are all copyright ©1997 by Dirty Linen, Ltd, Baltimore, MD