The Battle of the Cajun Festivals

Two competing Cajun music festivals at the same time--in the same geographical market--makes about as much sense as gumbo without rice.

Nevertheless, warfare, Cajun-style, comes to town this weekend in conflicting outdoor events. The main combatants aren’t the musicians, but the promoters: Two former partners who now get along about as well as a couple of alligators snapping at each other in a swamp fight.

To the north, at the John Anson Ford Theatre: The second annual Hollywood Cajun & Zydeco Festival on Saturday and Sunday features a touring package of acts called the Louisiana Cajun Zydeco Revue.

Topping the bill--which is the same both days--is accordionist Rockin’ Sidney, writer of “(Don’t Mess With My) Toot Toot,” the most popular contemporary Cajun song.

To the south, at the Olympic Velodrome on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson: The second annual “Original” Los Angeles Cajun and Zydeco Festival presents nine bands over two days. Michael Doucet & Beausoleil, one of the most innovative and acclaimed Cajun groups, headlines on Saturday, while Buckwheat Zydeco, the only zydeco act currently signed by a major record company (Island), tops the bill on Sunday.

Roy Hassett, a successful carnival operator who also runs the John Anson Ford Theatre under a long-term lease with its owner, Los Angeles County, is promoting the Hollywood festival.

His rival at the Velodrome is Rhode Islander Franklin Zawacki, whose long love affair with things Cajun prompted him eight years ago to begin promoting the nation’s first Cajun festivals outside of Louisiana.

In 1986, Hassett attended the Cajun festival in Rhode Island, which annually draws about 10,000 people over the Labor Day weekend, and proposed that he and Zawacki team up for a similar event in Los Angeles.

Hassett would provide the venue, Zawacki would use his close relationships with Cajun musicians to provide the talent.

The result last Memorial Day weekend was a happy gathering of performers and fans of Cajun and zydeco--the two lively, eminently danceable folk-music styles that spring from the rural, French-speaking communities of southwestern Louisiana.

On the second day, a standing-room-only crowd of 1,500 filled the theater. Instead of being solidified by success, however, the partnership behind the festival fell apart.

In the first public salvo of the ensuing Cajun war, Zawacki revealed his rift with Hassett in printed flyers advertising his Velodrome festival.

“Roy shrugged off paying several festival bills and has continued to keep my share of the profits,” Zawacki wrote in a short text titled “Why the ‘Original’ Festival Moved to the Velodrome.”

Zawacki said later that he publicized his problems with Hassett to make it clear that Zawacki no longer had anything to do with the Ford Theatre’s Cajun festival, and to alert people who had enjoyed last year’s event that its legitimate sequel had moved.

Hassett acknowledges that he has held back about $5,600 that his ex-partner was due after last year’s festival (Zawacki puts the amount owed at $12,000). Hassett, who denies any other unpaid debts in connection with the ’87 event, said he asked for extra time to pay Zawacki after the festival because his theater operation, then in its first season, was short of cash.

When Zawacki complained to county officials, Hassett said he decided not to pay. “When we were prepared to pay him in September, he had already started a campaign to blacken our reputation and I thought some damages were in order,” Hassett said.

The upshot of the former partners’ financial disagreement, and various other back-and-forth allegations of greed and bad behavior leveled by them and their associates, is that area music fans have a choice between two festivals this weekend, both laying claim to the good will generated a year ago.

Zawacki said he needs to draw at least 2,000 fans to the Velodrome each day to make his festival a success. Dan Jacobson, an independent producer hired by Hassett to stage the Hollywood festival, said a draw of more than 600 people each day would make the Ford Theatre show a financial success.

Hassett and Zawacki say they are confident despite the competition. But Kate Mytron, president of the Bon Ton Social Club, a group of 100 Los Angeles aficionados of Louisiana culture, regards the L.A. Cajun war as a disturbing development.

A Zawacki loyalist, she appealed unsuccessfully for the Ford Theatre to postpone its Cajun festival. “There’s a real limited audience, and you need to put all the people together,” said Mytron. “If there’s a split, everybody’s going to lose. It shouldn’t be.”