Travels with Darley | S11E3 | Lafayette, Louisiana

Travels with Darley | S11E3 | Lafayette, Louisiana

(bright music)
– Hi, I’m Darley Newman,
and we’re exploring festivals,
food, culture, history,
and heading out crawfishing
with Barry Toups
and some friends and taking
a Zydeco dance lesson
to get ready for Festival International
and much more here at
Lafayette, Louisiana.
Take it away, Brenda.
– (speaks French Creole) Lafayette.
(lively music)
– Let’s head to Cajun Country,
Lafayette, Louisiana, where Zydeco music
and the International
Festival de Louisiane
combine for an all-sensory
and tasty adventure.
I’m traveling to Lafayette in the spring
for this annual five-day cultural festival
that’s been hopping since the 1980s.
We’re diving into the festival
and history of Lafayette,
starting with getting festival ready
with a downtown entrepreneur.
You can’t go to Festival International
and not have a hat, or at least I can’t.
So I’m stopping by the
Cajun Hatter to meet Colby.
Colby Hebert, otherwise
known as the Cajun Hatter,
creates special hats for
Festival International
and uses his Cajun roots
and Louisiana ingredients for inspiration.
– We always pour a little bit of this
and get the party going.
It’s local sugar cane rum.
I like to call it swamp tea.
– Mm!
– Welcome to Louisiana.
– That’s the welcome I like.
How did you get into this, Colby?
– Hats to me are the pinnacle of fashion.
It’s a way that you can
kind of express yourself
with an outfit that’s
kind of simple, basic,
and then you throw a hat on,
and it sort of just takes
you to a different place.
We have this design bar with an aesthetic
that I’ve cultivated
that I call swamp chic.
Mostly it’s kind of just locally,
geographically sourced things.
We’ve got brown cotton, wildflowers,
the dried lavender, and the
wheat and things like that
that are grown around here.
We’ve got prayer cards to kind
of reflect that, you know,
Cajun-Catholic cultural tie.
It’s just kind of taken that, you know,
nitty-gritty rootsy aspect
of Louisiana and our culture
and then kind of elevating
it into something
that’s still elegant
and classy and stylish.
– I love that it’s
creative, it’s cultural.
It’s your heritage, it’s sustainable.
– I’m, you know, really proud
of what we’ve been able to put together.
And these are our alligator
palm Guatemalan straw hats.
They’re really great
in weather, waterproof,
and you can also obviously get a lot
of sun protection from it.
So this is the perfect thing for festival.
– And for me, ’cause I
need that sun protection.
I mean, this stands out.
I pick out a bandana,
and Colby shapes my hat
before we go back to the design bar
to add in the swamp chic look
with prairie grass and greenery.
So I’ve definitely never
seen a hat exactly like this.
– Right, that’s kind of the idea.
We have a little bit of me,
a little bit of you in this.
It’s a collaboration, a lot of Louisiana.
– I’m ready to rock this festival.
– Love it.
(Darley laughs)
– Well, cheers.
– Perfect for you. (speaks French Creole)
Welcome to Louisiana.
– Welcome to Lafayette.
But I’m not done getting
ready for the festival.
I stop in a local thrift
store and get a festival skirt
to try to complete my look.
Bon Festival. Let’s do it!
I’m checking out the
diverse artisans first.
Festival International de
Louisiane is a free festival
that brings in artists
from around the world
who share their crafts, music, history,
and culture across the downtown area.
The focus of the festival is
celebrating the rich culture
of the Acadiana, the fertile
land of bayous and prairies
that was a settlement
area of the Acadian people
in the late 1700s.
The Festival International celebrates
this francophone world.
You’ll find a cross-section
of cultural experiences here,
including musicians from
Mongolia, Gambia, and Ghana.
So we’re here in the morning.
The street’s are gonna be
jam-packed later today.
– Yeah, yeah, shoulder to
shoulder like ants. (laughs)
– [Darley] Cory and I
take a walk to learn more
about the vibe and culture in Lafayette.
– Well, downtown, you know, it really
kind of is like the cultural epicenter.
Being able to experience the culture
and the place through the people
is obviously where the reality is.
And for us, you know, we like
to just throw it right at you.
We’ve got music all day long,
food every corner that you turn,
people who are making things, you know,
showing their art, bringing
things from around the world
and locals doing the same thing,
kind of expressing the things that they do
all up on a pedestal here in Lafayette
for everybody to experience
and have a great time.
You know, we kind of never
really meet a stranger,
we like to say.
We’re so passionate about our culture,
you know, so anytime people
come down here and visit,
we really just wanna
make sure that they can
get that same joie de vivre
and kind of understand
the way that we roll, you know?
We let the good times roll.
(speaks French Creole)
– A little bit of French,
a little bit of Cajun?
– Yep.
– A little bit of Louisiana.
– [Colby] Yep.
– To learn more about
the history of Lafayette
and Acadian culture,
I’m visiting Vermilionville
historic village,
a living history site
which chronicles the people
who have called this area
home throughout history,
including American Indians, the Acadians,
Creoles, and more.
Travelers can walk
among restored buildings
from the 18th and 19th centuries
and meet interpreters
who share the history
of the Acadian people and Lafayette.
You’ve been here over 20 years.
– Yes. (laughs)
– How did you get into doing this?
– I stuck my foot in my mouth.
(both laugh)
No.
– We all do that.
– I am a seamstress by trade,
fourth-generation seamstress.
And when I came here, a lady was spinning,
and I just was fascinated with it.
So I got to spin, and I
said, "Oh, I can do that."
– Brenda LaLonde specializes
in traditional Acadian crafts.
The Acadians are the ancestors
of what we know today as Cajuns.
They came from Western France
to Canada in the 17th century
and then migrated to
subtropical Louisiana,
where they found that the environment
among other factors was a challenge.
What was daily life like for
the people who lived here?
– It was a hard life,
and there was nothing,
like, your nearest neighbor
might’ve been five miles away,
and they had to walk through
the swamp and everything,
and the snakes and the
alligators and all the bugs.
– So there was the fear of snake bites,
bug bites, heatstroke.
– All of it. (laughs)
Coming from Canada, most
of ’em we’re not accustomed
to the hot weather.
– How do you think that
the culture of the past
has influenced present-day Lafayette?
– Oh, it’s influenced it a lot
because of the food mainly,
the food and the music.
I mean, it’s what it is.
I’m very proud of it.
– What are you most proud of?
What makes you most proud?
– The individuality. We
managed out of nothing.
We came and prospered.
It’s not just money-wise, it’s heart-wise.
Yeah, so, that’s what I’m proud of.
– What is your favorite word
or phrase in Creole French?
Teach me something.
(Brenda speaks French Creole)
(Darley speaks French Creole)
– (speaks French Creole)
Hi. How you doing?
(Darley speaks Creole)
(Brenda speaks Creole)
(both laughing)
– Yes!
♪ Let’s party now ♪
(both laughing)
– Now let’s go hear some music.
– Yeah, we need that.
Zydeco music, French
music, it doesn’t matter
– [Darley] If you’re heading to Lafayette,
you might wanna brush up
on your dancing skills.
And if you’re coming to
Festival International,
you definitely need to.
Dr. Moriah Hargrave, a
folklorist, health coach,
and dancer created ZydeFit.
– It’s kinda like a Louisiana
version of Zumba, if you will.
It’s a dance workout to Zydeco music.
I came up with this because
whenever I would go out dancing,
people would always be like,
"Oh, my gosh, that’s such a workout."
So we just decided, you know what?
It is a workout, but let’s
make it something legit
in the health world.
– [Darley] Zydeco dance originated
among the francophone
Creole peoples of Acadiana,
also known as Cajun Country.
Moriah introduces me to this dance style.
– So for Zydeco, your upper
body is very strong, very firm.
You don’t really move this part around.
And if you’re Zydeco dancing,
you’re digging in the dirt, you’re-
– So, you’re going down low,
and you’re heading up high, okay.
– Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re
just gonna relax at the knees.
So just gimme a little bounce here, okay.
And then shake your hip
side to side. There you go.
Now your weight’s right,
and you’re stepping left.
So you’re gonna go one,
together, two, together,
one, together, two, together.
Now, these are your party hands.
Keep ’em high and happy.
That’s what I tell people.
The other thing I tell
people is that you go
heavy, heavy, heavy, light,
heavy, heavy, heavy light.
It’s almost like when
you’re in the kitchen
and you shut the utensil
drawer with your hip, you know?
There you go. There you go.
When you’re dancing with locals,
they’re not gonna make
eye contact with you.
– Okay, and they’re just-
– And they’re not gonna smile.
– So if you’re dancing
and you’re feeling like,
"Oh, I’m smiling, having fun"
and this person is just not
responding, that’s normal.
– Yeah, just it’s normal.
Just look around, enjoy the festival.
Don’t worry about them.
– It’s part of it.
– It’s a cultural thing.
It’s just part of it. We’re
just focused on dancing.
We’re not worried about you
until the end of the song,
and then we’ll give you a hug.
– Let’s go. Let’s go to that festival!
– I know, I know. I think you’re ready.
I think you’re ready.
(upbeat music)
– If you’re traveling
to Lafayette, Louisiana,
a culinary Cajun specialty
that you just have to try
is the boudin, and I’m trying it
at locally loved The French Press.
Boudin can be prepared a
variety of different ways,
but the classic recipe
is some type of pork meat
with rice, liver, onions, seasonings.
This one happens to be fried.
It can also come out
looking like a sausage.
We’ve got some biscuits.
We’ve got some bacon, some cane syrup, mm.
That crunch is superb,
sweet, salty, crunchy,
and the inside, super moist.
And the biscuit’s fantastic,
wonderful combination.
Really, really tasty.
(lively music)
It’s day two of Festival International,
and I am stage-hopping, going
from concert to concert.
They have everything from Celtic to K-pop
to Christian rock going on here,
and it’s just quite a fun scene.
You definitely have to
dance when you’re here.
I get to test out my new
dancing skills with Moriah.
Lafayette’s celebration of cultures
influences food and local artists.
Thank you.
And food and art is
everywhere at the festival.
(upbeat Zydeco music)
I’m taking a detour to meet Lu Wixon
at the Acadiana Center for
Arts in downtown Lafayette.
(funky music)
You grew up here in Lafayette.
Am I pronouncing that right, Lafayette?
– It’s Lafayette, like
have you laughed yet.
– Lafayette, Lafayette, have
you laughed yet. (laughs)
– That’s right.
– I knew they’re laughing
here, so. (laughs)
Lu Wixon is this year’s
official visual artist
for Festival International,
and she’s been coming to
the festival for 35 years.
Here it is, so colorful!
– Here it is.
– I love it.
So this is the official
painting, the official artwork,
and you are the official artist for this.
– [Lu] For this year,
for this festival.
– Well, congratulations.
– Thank you.
So I was always doing art,
and well, because I’ve been coming so long
and I would sketch when I was here
and go home and do the paintings,
and so I had a lot of
paintings already done.
I grew up in a very musical family,
so I’ve always loved music.
There’s so much diversity the
whole time that you’re here.
Things that impressed me
the most were the costumes
and the colors and the
positions of the bodies.
– That deserves a little Zydeco.
After speaking with
festival veteran Lu Wixon,
I’m attuned even more to colorful details,
including what to eat.
Festival International is all about
choosing your own adventure,
and today I’m choosing
the adventure of food.
You’ve got your traditional festival food,
your soft serve, your funnel cakes,
your cheeseburgers, but there’s also a lot
of international things on the menu here.
We’ve got our jambalaya. I’ve
got a crawfish bread bowl.
Thank you.
– You’re welcome!
– Okay.
– Okay, I saw everyone
trying these as they were
walking around today,
and I felt like I had to get this.
This is the crawfish and spinach boat.
Okay, it’s almost like
a spinach artichoke dip
meets a crawfish soup,
super thick, super savory,
and it’s gonna be so good
when I dip this bread in it.
This is, ooh, it’s got a kick to it.
(lively Zydeco music)
(laughing) Well, let’s
go meet some crawfish.
I’m going fishing just about
40 minutes from Lafayette.
I’m meeting Barry Toups to learn
about how to catch crawdaddies
at Mrs. Rose’s B and B.
(lively Zydeco music)
Wow!
– [Barry] You see?
– [Darley] So can I pick these up?
– You sure can, but look,
if you grab ’em like this
in the back, they won’t bite you.
– Okay.
Barry takes travelers on adventures
that actually help him out, too,
collecting crawfish from the steel traps
that line his ponds.
They’re getting bigger.
(calm music)
– So when you dump it,
you’re gonna hand your trap back to me.
I’m gonna bait it and
put it back in the water.
– [Darley] How long has crawfishing
been happening here in Louisiana?
– So actually, the Indians are the ones
that first introduced
them to the Cajun people,
and back then they were fishing ’em
with just maybe nets or something.
90% of the crawfish caught
in the United States
is caught here in Louisiana.
– [Darley] Oh, there’s a snake!
If you’re heading out with Barry,
sometimes you’ll catch more than crawfish.
– [Barry] Oh, we got a turtle.
Hold on, that’s a snapping turtle.
– Oh, my god, I’ve got
a crawfish on my hand.
We got a snapping turtle. We got a snake.
– [Barry] This is a snapping turtle.
These things will bite your finger off.
They actually breed in the open water,
and when they’re done breeding,
they bury back in the ground.
They have to have moisture
to survive in the ground.
If we go through a major drought,
they’re known to bury up to 10 foot deep.
So that’s why some years your
crop’s better than others,
’cause the weather has
everything to do with crawfish.
(boat engine rumbling)
– [Darley] Oh no, I missed a pot.
– You’re doing fine.
– I missed a pot.
(mellow music)
So guests can come here,
they can work hard, get really hungry,
and then learn how to eat this crawfish.
– Exactly, we’ll show you how to peel ’em.
– Let’s do it. I can’t wait, I’m hungry.
Man overboard. Oh, I gotcha.
You can’t get away from
us. Your days are numbered.
Actually, your minutes are numbered.
There we go, whoo!
The hard work is not over.
We clean the crawfish and
dump them into a hot pot
of boiling water with special seasoning
and then fill up our trays with crawfish.
And a potato. (laughs)
– All right, that’s one tray.
– [Darley] Wow!
– That’s five pounds of crawfish.
So here’s the proper way
of peeling the crawfish.
Twist the tail off.
– [Darley] Okay.
– You hold the tail like
this, go back and forth.
Pinch the bottom of the tail, pull it out.
Take that black vein out.
– Okay.
– Try it.
– Hmm.
– So yeah, this is your
first time getting crawfish.
You went from the pond
to the table with them.
What do you think about it?
– You know, it’s hard work.
This is worth the effort.
What’s your favorite
part about all of this?
– You know, just sharing
our Cajun culture,
meeting people from all over the world.
I tell people now I’m
traveling the world here,
and seeing that person eat crawfish
for the first time and enjoying ’em,
it was probably my most favorite part.
– Well, this is my first time.
– Awesome!
– So I’m glad I could do it here with you,
Barry, the crawfish king.
– No better place than Cajun Country.
– No better place than here, right here.
(upbeat Zydeco music)
Lafayette, Louisiana, has a
number of old-school dance halls
where people congregate
to dance, drink, and dine,
especially on the weekends.
Dance halls go back to the mid 1800s here,
and dance culture goes back centuries.
I’m checking out one
during the daylight hours,
Hideaway Hall.
Ooh, this is so cool, Lina.
– [Lina] Thank you.
But it really just started
with this chandelier,
and then I kind of just went from there
and matched everything to that.
– [Darley] Lina Livingston
hails from Denmark.
She came to Lafayette
on vacation and stayed,
meeting the local community
through the dance scene.
She’s undertaken the renovations
of an old home and dance
hall at Hideaway Hall.
– The concept was really like something
that was very Lafayette, having
like a little music venue
but also this sort of hotel bar
for, you know, the traveling person.
And so I think it’s just people
really, they enjoy going out
and dancing and meeting
people and it’s, I did it.
I didn’t know anyone here, and I went out,
and you know, the first
night I had friends.
You come here and you just have
all these people coming together.
– Back at the Acadiana
Center for the Arts,
I’m meeting a Latinx artist
who combines her Puerto Rican heritage
with her Louisiana roots.
Malentina, you’ve performed
at Festival International before.
– Yes, this is my fourth time,
but this year is my solo project,
and I’m backed by a nine-piece band,
which is extremely exciting.
– [Darley] Malentina is known
as the Mambo Queen of the South
and draws inspiration
from her time in Louisiana
and Puerto Rico as well as
Spanish and Afro-Cuban music.
– Malentina is a name I coined years ago
when I started to perform that
meant "the malicious one."
And it wasn’t about being mean or bad.
It was about making my own rules.
It’s like what you’re about to see
is the show that I created for myself.
– I love that.
(emcee speaking Spanish)
(crowd cheering)
– You’re called the
Mambo Queen of the South.
– Right.
– Share with me about your music.
– So mambo is a genre
that I have obsessed over.
What differentiates it from salsa
is that it has to be a big band,
and I liked the intensity
and the bigness of mambo.
So when you hear it, you’re like,
"Ooh, it sounds like salsa."
It is. Salsa is a type of mambo.
It’s a less big band sound.
– You are from Puerto Rico originally.
– What I play predominantly
is Puerto Rican and Cuban mambos.
(Malentina singing in Spanish)
To me it’s a sense of pride
because that is my roots,
and I’ve always, like, my biggest goal
is to succeed as an artist being myself,
and mambo seemed like the thing
that checked all the boxes
that satisfied me personally.
– I love that you can travel the world
through these various musical stages
here at Festival International,
but also that there is this diversity.
– So Lafayette is called The Hub City.
I don’t know if you’ve heard that,
but it’s a town where people
come and work and leave.
And the Cajun culture
and the Creole culture,
these were people that were migrating.
They were moving, they were escaping.
So I think that spirit
has always remained here
of people that just
come from somewhere else
and make it a home,
and the culture already
is very welcoming of that
because everybody relates.
And I think people’s
pride in their roots here
made me want to dig my own roots.
And that’s how I got
involved in discovering
and learning about mambo
and being very proud of that
music and appreciating it.
So I think that will always be something
that I find the most special
about Festival International,
all the music that
festival brings to people.
This music isn’t that available,
and people can discover
that they might have a passion
for something they didn’t know.
(Malentina singing in Spanish)
– [Group] Happy Festival International!
– [Darley] The festival
comes alive at night, too,
with a silent disco where
DJs spin a variety of music.
(dancers singing indistinctly)
– [Darley] And guests choose
what they wanna groove to.
(people chattering)
– [Announcer] Welcome,
welcome, all runners,
athletes, walkers, welcome to the-
– [Darley] Festival International is a lot
of food, drinks, and dancing,
and one family-friendly
annual event is a morning run
through the streets of Lafayette.
So I registered for this 5K
before I got to Lafayette,
and I’m here at Festival
International this morning.
It’s been a couple of days
of eating and drinking in Lafayette,
and yeah, I think it’s a great idea.
This active event attracts people
of all ages, including kids.
Look at all of these motivated people!
I am so impressed here in Lafayette.
It’s like, I can’t even see,
a lot of people came out
to run in this race this morning,
or walk, whatever your
preference. (laughing)
Apparently I’m running in the kids’ group.
– Four, three, two, one.
(air horn blaring)
– They’re running, they’re
really running. (laughing)
These are like fast runners. (laughs)
(funky music)
So that fried boudin, that
crawfish, that local rum,
I’m starting to feel it.
I do a lot of adventurous
stuff on my travels,
but I have to say, this
was a bit of a test for me.
All right, I’m definitely
seeing Lafayette right now.
(calm music)
(people chattering)
I think some festival
food is in my future.
(calm music)
And I won’t feel badly
about eating it at all.
(announcer speaking indistinctly)
32 minutes! Oh, almost
a 10-minute mile, what?
Whoo! Ow, I think I got a cramp.
It’s a boudin cramp. Ow.
Races are so fun.
I mean, even if you walk
it, the energy, the people,
everyone’s just having a
really good time today.
So I’m glad I did it. (laughing)
(upbeat music)
And because I did run,
we seek out good ice cream on
our travels, me especially.
So when I heard about
Borden’s Ice Cream Shoppe,
this is the last Borden’s in
the USA, I had to check it out.
– We make things the same way
they’ve made ’em since 1940,
and you get that feeling
when you walk in our building
you’ve stepped back in time.
– I love the old tin
ceilings. They’re so cool.
– I know. Aren’t they pretty?
At one time there were over a
hundred locations like this,
and now this is the only
freestanding Borden’s
left in the country.
– So your family saved Borden’s.
– Kinda so.
– Yeah.
– Yeah, and how so.
– How? How did it come about?
– One day my dad and I were talking,
and he says, "What about Borden’s?"
I said, "What about it?" He
said, "Are you interested?"
I said, "Yeah," and this
just fell into place
14 years ago yesterday.
– Congratulations.
– Thank you.
– This place is popular.
It’s a great place for a festival,
you know, a little cool-down treat.
– And this ice cream is amazing.
– I’m so glad you love it.
– I’m so glad I ran into you.
– Yeah, cheers.
– Cheers.
(lively Zydeco music)
We’ve had so much fun here
in Lafayette, Louisiana,
and I have to say it’s
really because of the people,
people like Colby.
– Thank you.
– But that’s the case when we travel.
It’s really all about the people,
and they make the place super special.
And that’s been the
case here in Lafayette.
– Thank you.
– Thank you for joining us,
and we’ll see you again
somewhere else in the world.
(lively Zydeco music)
– If we keep cheersing like that. (laughs)
– We’re not making it to that festival.
(both laughing)
Let me do my dance moves.
♪ Crawfish boil time, crawfish ♪
(Darley laughing)
I suck at this. (laughs)
No walking. We are running.
– Matter of fact, my blood
type is ABV, you know?
(both laughing)
– Mine’s A-plus, and this
is an A-plus type of rum.
– [Both] Welcome to Lafayette, Louisiana.
(Darley laughs)

Travel to the heart of Cajun Country as Darley attends the annual Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette, Louisiana. You will also experience crawfishing, Cajun cooking, Zydeco dancing, and tasty cuisine. Let the good times roll.

Host: Darley Newman
Director: Darley Newman
Writer: Darley Newman

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