Grand Fugue on the Art of Gumbo
Synopsis
This documentary film on HD video explores the color, the rich tradition, the musical resonance and the fragrant food traditions in today’s Cajun Louisiana, a place where a unique community of people, in touch with their roots, has happily survived in the face of huge environmental compromises, coastal erosion and America’s biggest oil spill disaster.
Cajun foodways are a cultural continuum, starting with the traditions imported to the Louisiana landscape by Acadian immigrants of French descent, mixed with existing Native Americans, and German, Spanish, Isleno and Irish settler practices; and influenced by the range of minority immigrant populations co-existing in this place. All of these cultural ingredients, mixed with the accessibility of improving cooking technology, and the population’s inherent pragmatism and willingness to experiment, have been shaped and refined by the richly productive wetland and prairie habitats of the region.
The film looks at the role of music, the actual use of seasoning (not over-spicing), industrious food related business people and fishermen on their boats. Festivals, Mardi Gras, a boucherie and backyard crab boil all come together in a startlingly vivid and intimate picture of these unique people. It is a picture few in Louisiana have ever seen in this way.
