The Texas-born, Louisiana-raised musical storyteller has been inducted into the Gulf Coast Music Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.Ī highlight for me is the parades I get to lead. The festival kicks off with a concert Thursday, headlined by Grammy-nominated boogie-woogie blues singer and pianist Marcia Ball. Along with the crawfish, there are a variety of Louisiana and local favorites, including gumbo, jambalaya, barbecue, Boudin sausage, catfish and more. Q: What can people expect at this year’s festival?Ī: Gator By the Bay will be held from next Thursday to Sunday, May 14, at Spanish Landing Park across from San Diego International Airport. You can learn how to play rubboard, hear stories about growing up Creole and Cajun, practice your yodeling, or just sit and enjoy a history of Latin percussion rhythms. It’s an intimate, acoustic-style stage tucked away in the trees overlooking the bay. ![]() Q: What are the favorites of the festival each year?Ī: The 10,000 pounds of live crawfish trucked in from Louisiana can’t be beat. The accordion that became the predominant instrument in both Cajun and zydeco music. Often, Cajun music is accompanied by the metal triangle for percussion, and the Cajun accordion is diatonic and works similarly to the harmonica. The instruments used are primarily the accordion and the fiddle. This waltz type of music was pioneered by the non-black Acadian emigrants from Nova Scotia. It is greatly influenced by rhythm and blues style of the black Creole and jazz music popular in the late 17th century, and Zydeco musicians typically use the piano accordion.Ĭajun music is a more country type of music that was popular during the 1930s and ’40s. Zydeco makes use of various instruments that may include a washboard as percussion. Zydeco is distinct from Cajun music in that there is a constant returning rhythm to it. Zydeco or Cajun each have a distinct rhythm that sets them apart. I started my own business, Peter Oliver Productions, a few years later and have been able to stay afloat through thick and thin all these years.Ī: Zydeco music and Cajun music are often used interchangeably, but are entirely different from each other, although their sound is really not that different. I left on sabbatical in 1981 to travel to Europe for a few months, and when I returned 18 months later, I was able to continue my connection with the hospital as a video production consultant for several years. The medical staff often told us how powerful our message was and that we could get sick kids to do things the staff could not. We started a children’s show that eventually landed on national television, involving sock puppets. During that first year, our small staff started producing surgical videos for staff and patient training and continuing medical education, and we discovered the hospital had a closed-circuit television system. ![]() ![]() The program picked up half the salary and the company picked up the rest for a year. Q: After the Navy, you attended Grossmont College and the University of California, San Diego, earning a communications degree and then starting your own production company?Ī: I interned at the children’s hospital for about a year, and after school, I started working there through the CETA (Comprehensive Educatonal Training Act) program that was initiated during the Carter administration. He took some time to talk about his work, his love of Louisiana culture and what people can expect from the big festival, which starts on Thursday. Oliver, 66, lives in Normal Heights with his wife, Roxanne, and they have three children and a grandson. He’s gone from serving in the Navy, where he spent two tours in Vietnam during the war, to coming home and studying and working in media and film, to continuing his film work through his production company, along with running a café in El Cajon with his wife and heading up the Bon Temps Social Club, which celebrates southwestern Louisiana culture and helps produce Gator by the Bay. “As we have grown, we have included blues, country, swing, Latin and other musical genres to attract a much broader audience.” We added food and other entertainment along the way,” he says. “Gator by the Bay was designed from the beginning to be a dancer’s festival first. Now in its 16th year, the festival has always focused on being a space for dancers that added other elements over the years. ![]() As the kind of kid who grew up doing his best to copy the dance moves he’d see on television, it makes sense that Peter Oliver has found himself as one of the co-producers of the annual Gator by the Bay zydeco, blues and crawfish festival.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |