Synopsis:

An outsider's account of her transformative obsession with Louisiana's joyous music.

 

By age thirty-nine, Blair Kilpatrick had settled into life as a practicing psychologist, wife, and mother. Then a chance encounter in New Orleans turned her world upside down. She returned home to Chicago with unlikely new passions for Cajun music and its signature instrument, the accordion. Captivated by recurring dreams of playing the Cajun accordion, she set out to master it. Yet she was not a musician, was too self-conscious to dance, and didn't even sing in the shower.

Kilpatrick's obsession took her from Chicago's Cajun dance scene to folk music camp in West Virginia, back and forth to south Louisiana, and even to a Cajun festival in France. An unexpected family move brought her to the San Francisco Bay Area, home to the largest Cajun-zydeco music scene outside the Gulf Coast. There, she became a protégé of renowned accordionist Danny Poullard, a Louisiana-born Creole and the guiding spirit of the local music community.

Engaging, uplifting, and illuminating a unique corner of the American cultural landscape, Accordion Dreams is her account of the possibility of passion, risk-taking and change--at any age.

 

Blair Kilpatrick has an independent practice in psychotherapy. She also performs and records with Sauce Piquante, a traditional Cajun-Creole band she founded in the late 1990s.

Write a Review »

Author Comment:

Coming in January 2009 and now available for pre-order through Amazon

Topics/Categories:

Cajun music and culture, Creole music and culture, Louisiana, Memoir, Music, personal growth at midlife, southern culture

Genre:

Music

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

University Press of Mississippi

Purchase From:

Amazon

Original Publish Date:

January 1, 2009

Formats and associated ISBNs:

160473101X 978-1604731019

Formats:

Hardcover

• Share With:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•