Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Los Islenos Festival, St Bernard Parish, Louisiana (flickr image: Alysha Jordan)
Misery caused by the BP oil spill could inspire a song. In fact, some Spanish-speaking fishermen or Isleños in Louisiana have a centuries-old songwriting tradition. Their ancestors brought it from the Canary Islands. It’s an unusual ten-line song form called decima. But the songs, like the fishing, are becoming part of history. Bruce Wallace has more. Download MP3
Web extra audio: Listen to Isleños singing decimas
‘El Mosco y el Agua Alta’ sung by Allen Perez:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
‘El Trabajo del Welfare’ sung by Irvan Perez (Recording courtesy of the Nunez Community College Archives):
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Jesse Alfonso, Howard Serigne, and Henry Martinez tell drinking and bug-exterminating stories:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.
LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina forced residents of Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish out. That’s southeast of New Orleans. Among the displaced were Islenos. They’re descendants of immigrants from Spain’s Canary Islands. They began settling in Louisiana in the late 18th century. Many Islenos are back in St. Bernard now. But their future has been made uncertain once again, by the BP oil spill that began six months ago today. Uncertain, too, is the future of a type of folk song they sing. It’s called the decima. Reporter Bruce Wallace has more.
BRUCE WALLACE: Henry Martinez only remembers a bit of the song “El Trabajo del Welfare,” “Welfare Work.”
HENRY MARTINEZ: So, it goes in Spanish like this, Juanita la de Sico, anda p’arriba y p’abajo.
WALLACE: In the song, a woman tells anyone who’ll listen that if her husband doesn’t get paid, he’s not doing any more work. The song dates back to the 1930s, when lots of Islenos worked for the WPA, the federal government’s “Works Progress Administration.” That’s the “welfare” in the title. The song is a collection of different stories, all about life during the depression, and all tied together with a chorus.
SPEAKING SPANISH
MARTINEZ: O lilola, Y a mi poco se me da. “Y a mi poco se me da” means “I don’t give a damn,” you know?
WALLACE: Another verse is about the danger of the WPA work. One guy gets a thorn in his foot. Later someone else cuts their foot with an axe. My favorite verse might be the one about this guy Joe Gonzales whose beat-up truck carries lots of people to and from work.
SPEAKING SPANISH
IRVAN PEREZ: El troquito Joe Gonzales, que los yeva y los trai, que la maquina no biena, y no teine buenos taires.
WALLACE: The truck finally dies, and the commuters have to look elsewhere for a ride.
SPEAKING SPANISH
IRVAN PEREZ: Ay lilola, Y a mi poco se me da.
WALLACE: That’s Irvan Perez singing in 1984. For years he was the main decimero. He died two years ago leaving Martinez among a handful of people who remember these songs. The decimas are descended from medieval Spanish ballads. The Islenos ancestors brought them to Louisiana from the Canary Islands. Each verse had ten lines. That’s where the “deci” comes from. In St. Bernard Parish the songs took on a simpler form, and their titles, like “Marcelino and the Trout,” “The Crab Fisherman’s Lament,” and “Wila the Mule,” say a lot about how these people have gotten by over the years. Like “El Trabajo del Welfare,” many of the decimas offer laughing looks at human foibles. Lloyd Serigne is an Islenos and longtime St. Bernard resident.
LLOYD SERIGNE: These people had a culture where, if they was in misery, they made fun of themselves. They thought about something funny, and made up a song about it, you know.
WALLACE: Until the ‘50s, the decimas were a regular part of life. Isleno’s would trade old ones and invent new ones at weekly dances. Some songs were meant to poke fun. Others were meant to romance. Sometimes they were a little of both. Jesse Alfonso’s grandfather was a regular at these dances.
JESSE ALFONSO: And one lady sang him, “Tiene un naris tan grande que no depeulo sus ojos.” And my grandpa said, “Tu es bonita comme un noche sin luna. Yo no se que penso tu madre no lo olo en la cuna.” She told my grandpa, “Your nose is so big you can’t see your eyes,” and my grandpa said, “You’re pretty like a night without no moon. I don’t know what your mamma was thinking about that she didn’t choke you in the cradle.”
WALLACE: The decimas and the Islenos antique brand of Spanish are fading partially because of the usual forces, mixing with other cultures and people moving away. Most young Islenos don’t speak Spanish. Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill have hastened this process. Prices have dropped for shrimp this season. A fact they attribute to squeamishness about Louisiana seafood. And there’s real fear about the future. Lloyd Serigne again.
SERIGNE: We don’t know what the effects is going to be next year or the year after on shrimp and crabs, and the seafood.
WALLACE: The day after I talked to Martinez, Alfonso and Serigne, I drove out to Delacroix Island, where many of the Islenos lived before Katrina. Allen Perez is one of a handful who’ve moved back. People told me Perez, who is Irvan Perez’s first cousin, knows more decimas than anyone else. In part because his father wrote a lot of them.
ALLEN PEREZ: My dad left the house singing, he come home singing. Which was beautiful. Nothing got under his skin that he couldn’t control. Nothing.
WALLACE: This attitude is at the heart of one of his father’s decimas “El Mosco y el Agua Alta,” “The Mosquito and the High Water.” His trapping business has been terrible, then he finds out a bank loan has suddenly come due. The whole family’s worrying, but he assures them they’ll figure something out. The day I met Perez he’d been to the local Gulf Coast claims office. He talked to a guy there about filing a claim for loss of income because of the oil spill.
PEREZ: He says, “Well how long you been a fisherman?” I says, “Since I was 18 years old and I’m 78, so every bit of 60 years. That’s all I ever done, fish to make a living.”
WALLACE: Perez hasn’t been fishing for the past five years though. He says he’s spent them rebuilding his house and boat after Katrina. He says the person at the claims office told him he might be ineligible because he hadn’t been fishing in the last year. Facing all this, it’s not really surprising that the decimas are fading. There are a lot of other things to worry about besides saving a dying tradition. At the same time, that tradition, songs making light of adversity, seems particularly useful right now. For The World, I’m Bruce Wallace, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
MULLINS: And you can hear the Islenos’ songs, and their stories about drinking and about exterminating bugs, at TheWorld.org.
Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.
Discussion
4 comments for “Lost songs of Louisiana”