Sauce Piquante

An obsession among audiophiles – among American ones, really – is that something needs to be new to be good.

I have just been schooled otherwise.

Writing for and about music, for a relatively new web publication no less, means playing musical detective, sniffing out the underground superstars of tomorrow, employing the journalistic term and notion of ‘scooping.’ Often enough I end up in clubs, galleries, converted warehouses among the artistic community, providing you define ‘artist’ as an early-20’s group of underemployed, genitally available hipsters in possession of something that either makes noise or sticks to the wall.

I don’t mean to sound condescending. Oh, that’s not true, I totally mean to sound condescending, because a lot of what I see are the products of someone so self-absorbed that they haven’t yet noticed that no one is raving over their 36-part series of pink-frosting, yarn, and cheesecloth sculptures. Clearly, I am as guilty in my self-satisfied snobbiness while writing about this phenomenon as the artists are for purveying it. Let us step away from pretense – all this was simply to introduce Sauce Piquante, a patently un-self-absorbed band. A dance band, really.

The venue – the Ashkenaz Community Center, a veritable Berkeley Institution – is suited to their music. It is Cajun-Creole, sung in French, heavy on the waltzes, the two-steps and the major scales, and suits the open-floor dancehall vibe. My university classes in French were of little use here; I understand maybe every fifth word, as Creole French is farthest on the francophone dial from Parisian French, but the band was prescient enough to give us the low-down on the general gist of things. Still, scrolling through my notes, which often mean nothing even me when I re-examine them the next day, one song apparently voices the sentiment “Yea, well, I can find me another blond hottie.” It might be speculating on this count.

These are not shoe-gazing insecure 22-year-olds who will be mortally offended if you plug your ears when they employ their “eardrum shredder” guitar pedal. They are past that, comfortable in their skin, and playing for the benefit of the audience, not their own egos. There is not a single note off-kilter, nor a mistake made – people are dancing, depending on them for cues and motion and movement, and the energy forms a complete circuit, flows free and circular so that the distinction between performer and patron is blurred. It is one single event, and everyone is a part of it. And everyone is not the narrow demographic of those between the ages of 20-28, mostly white, and largely tattooed; there are teenagers dancing with their dads, married couples both young and old are two-stepping, septuagenarians have shown up wearing absorbent fuzzy headbands, prepared to sweat.

It is charming, this entire scene, the rafters and the hardwood dance floor, the swirling skirts and proper etiquette, the counter-clockwise motion of dancing couples, turning gears in a larger machine. This is music that is steeped in method and tradition. It’s predictable only for the reason that it needs to be, as it is owned as much by the people who came to listen as the musicians playing it. There is no posturing, there is no notion of ‘look at me, how Groundbreaking I am’ – and for that reason, it is authentic. Whether or not the musicians are swamp-dwelling, crawdad-eating genetic Creoles is immaterial – the music is played for us, shorn of pretense, and they in turn rely on us to provide the counter-balance, to spin and stomp and dance, and so there is no need to judge. Just to participate and enjoy.

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