Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: The beat goes on in the bayou

We have been exploring the bayous in this amazingly watery state. We hardly saw birds in Mississippi. I think flowering trees must have mostly been cut to grow cotton there. Here, though, they are in bird heaven. We have been seeing male and female cardinals--such stunning birds; but our favourite, has been the snowy egret. We have seen them raise their delicate and fanciful plumes, particularly in the afternoons as they are grooming, safe in the protective crook of a cyprus tupelo tree, deep in the bayou. But it is hard to get close, so we took a better shot of an image in one of the observation rooms we came across enroute.

Hard to imagine these birds were nearly extinct at the end of the eighteenth century when the women of New York had their milliners decorate their hats with these showy feathers. Egret hunters were decimating the egret, killing off mamas, skinning them for hat feathers, leaving hundreds of baby egrets to die, untended, in the nest. Luckily a New York socialite read about the disgraceful practise and solicited her cousin to help her write to every single lady in the New York Blue Book social register begging them to boycott the trade. Luckily, that single act worked, and today the snowy egret is back in force in the bayou. We found many snapping turtles sunbathing on grass tufts, too, but alligators were lying low today.

Sundays appear to be the day for relaxing on the bayou. Folk, even, have private settlements with their personal houseboats moored on the water. Here for the weekend they go fishing, alligator hunting, a huge pastime, and partying. We came across three separate parties just along one route.

The first was in an old landing jetty done up as a seasonal seafood joint and bar. Here a group of musicians were playing the folksy Cajun classics we're getting to know. So relaxed and homey it was, that one of the band members 4 1/2 year old daughter sang an entire song, in their French dialect. And danced non-stop to her dad's music, much to our delight. Great to see the young ones learning the old ways, too.

Next, we came across a party on a houseboat where folk, enjoying their free time on the weekend, were playing loud Cajun music as they were moored ashore, uninterrupted by anyone, and interrupting no one, except maybe the alligators.

Finally, we found what I would imagine must be a modern day jook joint, though not playing the blues. It was a large wooden hut, overlooking the bayou, decorated with coloured lights, with graffiti signatures all over as in Ground Zero in Clarksdale, and folk began pouring in, at first in dribs and drabs as we arrived, then in their hundreds, paying a cover charge on entry and buying drinks, chatting and talking.

Then a band turned up. A Creole band, playing Zydeco music.This was our first experience of Zydeco. We were completely wowed.

Creoles, at least in Louisiana, appear to have an African-based heritage as part of their makeup. They were born here, but their ancestors may have been freedmen, or slaves, But, typically, a Creole would have a mixed heritage, potentially including Spanish ancestry, French colonist, German, American Indian, or suchlike. So, an amazing mix of race and musical influences make up this Creole music style; which, like Creole food, is quite unique.

Zydeco, like Cajun music, utilises fiddles, guitars and accordions. But, different from Cajun, they use a washboard, which in this band was made of metal, and hung, like a suit of metal chest armour, from the shoulders of the washboard player. It added a phenomenal steely metallic slash to the musical beat. Zydeco music is so popular, thanks to the Creoles down in these parts, that it now has its own category in music awards nationwide, and musical venues, playing Zydeco, are all the rage hereabouts.

Hundreds and hundreds of very happy people started dancing as the music began to play. We were completely wowed. This is what the crowd was here for. So, finally seeing such crowds on this remote edge of a bayou made sense to us. Amazingly, the dance crowd was not all that young. Ages ranged from mid twenties to the mid sixties, we estimated. But they were all rocking; here to spend the next four hours having a blast.

The rhythms were intense. The beats complicated in rhythm, somewhat Caribbean, somewhat African, somewhat rock, somewhat Harry Belafonte blues, and somewhat Cajun, but so upbeat you could not resist dancing, and the dancers were so skilled they could have been on television competing: often doing a jerky version of jive, that looked like a two step. Amazingly well practised.

The wooden floorboads rocked. The old building shook. You could feel the beat vibrate deep into to your bones. Even today, their beat goes on.