MEET THE ARTIST SPECIAL: Sarah Savoy from the USA
Strong issues
Accordionist Sarah Savoy invites Førdefestivalen Join us for a pinup photoshoot in Versailles. Here, you'll be full of boobies and bellies.
Sarah is about to be photographed in almost her panties with her Cajun accordion for next year's 'Accordion Babes Album and Pin-up Calendar.' She sits rocking in a rocking chair atop the counter of Tattoo Range, her fiancé Phil Van Roy's tattoo parlor, and smiles with red lips.
The calendar consists of twelve full-page photos, one accordion pinup for each month, all with their own track on the compilation album. Behind it stands Renée de la Prade, folk musician and rock'n'roll girl with bright pink hair and hard-stomping boots. "Sensual, fun and inspiring," she writes about the calendar CD on her homepage. She wants to make accordion sexy.
The photographer who takes Sarah's picture, French Célia Pernot, is still a cool lady on the team. She says that the pinup genre flourished during World War II. There were mass-produced pictures of scantily clad women who were meant to be hung (pin up) on the wall. The goal was to create a positive image of the body and sexuality and probably also strengthen fighting morale.
- Accordion pinups are women of all ages, skin colors and shapes; curvy women, masculine women and women who were not born women, Sarah lists.
- My mom is in the 2018 calendar. What's not sexy about that?
When a woman lets herself be photographed scantily clad with her instrument, she has to expect to be held accountable for it. I think that's something close to a law of nature. I myself ask Sarah if the calendar CD is a comment on the male-dominated music industry, a question that - when I think about it - I don't understand a damn thing myself. It's a pretty transparent attempt to intellectualize that the accordion pinups exploit sex (implicitly male weakness) in their marketing. Not exactly rocket science.
And on the other side of the table, Sarah sits looking at me with sparkling eyes as if she's about to burst out laughing, but barely manages to restrain herself in sympathy with the dilemma I've found my own brain in.
"It's fun. Nothing serious," she says. Something she will repeat several times during the interview.
Accordion playing has a nerdy image, Sarah thinks. There's a lot of lederhosen and Oktoberfest.
- But what's not sexy about the accordion? Do you know of another instrument that gets bigger when you play it? Ha-ha!
I have to chew on that a little. I saw a Frenchman playing on a goat on Førdefestivalen a gong, a kind of bagpipe in a lifelike design. It must be the closest thing I can think of to an instrument growing in the act, but I think Sarah is right. The goat did not get bigger.
Sarah laughs often and often. She is a true Southerner, born and raised in rural surroundings in the small town of Savoy, Louisiana. She is the daughter of the renowned musician couple Ann and Marc Savoy. Her mother is behind the album 'Cajun Music, A Reflection of a People' which is referred to as the Bible of Cajun music, and her father is renowned as both a performer and maker of the Cajun accordion, also known as the squeezebox.
Cajun music is one of the oldest folk music genres in the United States. The music is simple and rhythmic, often in the form of two steps, waltzes or polkas, and its roots are French. In the 17th century, French-speaking immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, where they founded the city of Detroit, among other places. From 1755 to 1763, a new wave of French-speaking immigrants arrived from Acadia in eastern Canada, driven out by the English. In present-day Louisiana, both of these groups are referred to as "Cadians". Some still speak French, while others have had their language diluted by English.
- Cajun culture is a place where music, food and community merge into a way of life, says Sarah.
It's a spinal reflex for Sarah to invite people along. No one should have to sit alone. On her way to the photo shoot, she gets into a conversation with an American couple on the street. It turns out they're from the neighboring town "back home," and she invites them along, first to the tattoo parlor and later to a restaurant for dinner.
She has a strong history of finding her Cajun roots through expatriates in Russia and France and - it's no secret - a love affair with punk and heavy metal that never seems to cool. She knows how flat and boring life can be without music and friends and food with lots of chili. She learned that the hard way.
Ever since she was little, she had this enormous attraction to Russia. She read everything she could get her hands on by Russian authors, Dostoevsky not least. At the age of 23, she moved to Moscow and got a job as marketing director for American Medical Centres. She was supposed to live there for six months, but she stayed for five years.
"I went to Moscow to find myself outside of Cajun culture. But what I found out was how much I need Cajun culture. Always the same," she says, letting it hang in the air.
She shudders slightly at the thought of dark winter days that aren't offset by bright summer nights.
"I had to go to Russia to understand. In February, when it was dark all day and snow blew through the cracks in my balcony windows, I could still make gumbo and jambalaya. I could invite friends over for dinner, and it immediately became warmer and cozier. I bring my culture with me wherever I go, and it's something I can share with the whole world," she says.
Many on Førdefestivalen will remember Sarah from 2013. She both played for, and cooked for, the audience. Cajun cuisine is known for its unpretentious food based on available ingredients. Gumbo is a stew made from what you have on hand, often with chicken and smoked sausage. Jambalaya is reminiscent of Spanish paella, a rice-based dish, usually with smoked sausage and shellfish. Topped with chili sauce, of course.
It was in Moscow that Sarah turned to tradition for solace. She wrote the cookbook 'The Savoy Kitchen - A Family History of Cajun Food', published by Kitchen Press in the UK. She listened to more and more Cajun music, and she discovered the accordion that her father had made for her. Up until then, she had mostly played guitar, also as a substitute member in her mother's band. Now she began to explore the accordion, the leading instrument in Cajun music.
- But it was never serious. Just fun!
(!)
This attitude is deeply rooted in Sarah. She is a counter-force.
- My siblings and I saw mom and dad perform on prestigious stages around the world, for example when President Bill Clinton was sworn in. The people who created Cajun music, on the other hand, were rough, low-lifes. They lived on the landfill. Women fight women over who took whose husband. And one thing I've realized: Cajun is more rock'n'roll than Pantera. "Full of love, but don't cross'em. Kicking little punks' arses."
The classical world that her parents showed her, all the fine stage costumes, made no impression. As a child, Sarah would run around naked with tangles in her hair, aka the rat's nest according to her father. She was drawn to a wilder side of life. Basically not so different from today's Sarah.
- When I came to Russia, everything fell into place. Cajun music is not to be studied, it is to be felt. Get up and dance, drink a beer, take off your shoes! There are lyrics that tear your heart in two, but far more often it is about "yesterday I went to a bar and got drunk, and today I feel bad", she says.
This attitude earned her the title 'The queen of white trash cajun' (fRoots Magazine). She takes Cajun music out of classic concert halls, down from her parents' stage, into her own home in a trailer camp outside Versailles, to the wooden bench and the outdoor grill under the faded red umbrella.
She has lived here with her ten-year-old daughter and Phil for a year. She has found herself a piece of Louisiana in France.
- We don't see the neighbors. We can go out in just our panties without bothering anyone; that's what we do in Louisiana. Ha-ha! We can cook outdoors. Play music. Walk the dog for hours and from a height see two tractors, she says and gets a small fist across the nose.
- We can't hunt here, it's a bit chilly. But we can hunt mushrooms. Mushrooms are good!
It's good to look at it positively.
There's something about Sarah that reminds me of the southern lady Myrtle in the movie 'The Dressmaker' or the chocolatier Vianne in 'Chocolat'. Women who drop into local communities like exotic birds and for a while, six months or five years, spice up the lives of the locals.
Sarah has lived in Russia for five years and in France for almost 11 years. She has been on her way home to Louisiana for just as long. She has been engaged, but now it is finally happening. One month after our visit, on May 12, she will marry Phil in a homemade wedding dress. The plan is to sell everything, both the trailer and the tattoo shop including stuffed animals and other American kitsch, and move across the pond.
"I need the sun, you know. In Louisiana, we have a couple of weeks of cold weather at high altitude, and then everyone gets dizzy," she says, laughing out loud.
Louisiana is named after the French Sun King Louis XIV. The southern state is bordered by Mississippi to the east, Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. The name alone is enough to make you sweat.
- I was supposed to be awake for six months. 16 years later, I still say "back home". I want to go back to my family first and foremost. But also to open fields for miles around. Magnolia blossoms. The buzzing of the mosquito swarms and the bats that move in to eat them up.
Sarah has had a fulfilling life with big changes. First to find herself, then to find home. Two sides of the same coin.
- A strong sense of family and community is why Cajun culture is so vibrant. The early settlement of America was hard on the Cajun people. They were driven from one area after another, eventually settling in the swamplands. And if you're going to have a chance of surviving in the swamps, you need family and community, she says, adding in a broad Southern dialect:
- You're not gonna make it on your own.
Singing has always been a part of Cajun culture.
- The neighbor has shot a duck, who has sausage? Someone might have a bag of rice, someone a bundle of onions. It's like the legendary nail soup, only in the Cajun Louisiana everyone shows up with an instrument in addition. Sausage and fiddle. Onions and accordion. And then we play all these songs that we've heard our whole lives.
- Aren't you the least bit worried that things have changed in 16 years?
- Absolutely not. We still live like this. Ha-ha!
Wedding photo, May 2019
Text, Video and Photo: BlackStarJournal