I long ago accepted I was a storyteller for my people. It’s never
anything officially bestowed upon one by the ancestors, or even a
conscious decision for me, but rather something I grew into. I vowed
that I would do my best to put my children in touch with those they
would never know. Just this morning I was telling them that in a couple
of days would be their great-grandfather’s birthday, and the thought
came to me yet again: I can tell stories (and often do), give dates and
descriptions and all that, but how can I mimic their voices?
A provision in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act would
allow military courts to issue protective orders that include “Red Flag”
gun confiscation, according to the more than 1,300-page bill.
In
the legislation, those beholden to the United States Code of Military
Justice could be issued a “military court protective order” by a
military judge or magistrate, which would make “possessing, receiving,
or otherwise accessing a firearm” illegal.
Dewey Balfa - Jai Ete Au Bal - Awesome Fiddlesticks
In a significant departure for this series, the 9th
installment of What Makes This Musician Great will focus on a band
instead of one musician, and more appropriately, a band of brothers.
The Balfa Brothers were a Cajun band of real-life brothers Rodney,
Dewey, Will, Harry, and Burkeman. They learned music from their father,
who was a Louisiana sharecropper, and they started playing together in
the 1940’s.
Their names are not as big and showy as any of the other
musicians featured in this series because their professional timing was
terrible. They first began to perform and record Cajun music at a time
when authentic Cajun had become “not cool,” and was being replaced by a
more homogenized and progressive sound. Therefore, since the Balfa
Brothers persisted with their old, traditional sound and stayed true to
their roots, they represent the last, best surviving example of
authentic Cajun music before the mass corruption of Cajun culture after
World War II. Eventually, a Cajun cultural renaissance would take place
in the late 1960’s, causing The Balfa Brothers to suddenly became a hot
commodity with international appeal. I had a chance to see The Balfa
Brothers in the Spring of 1978, and I missed it. They were performing
at a Cajun Festival near New Orleans, and my high school Jazz band was
there at the same time performing in a separate Jazz festival. I had
never heard of The Balfa Brothers, but the photo in the newspaper caught
my attention – it’s the photo seen with this article. I was intrigued
and conflicted, because something was pulling at my love of music to go
and see this group at all costs, but eventually my Jazz snobbery
prevailed. They were Cajun, after all, and NOT Jazz, but I would never
get another chance. Rodney and Will were killed in a car crash in 1979
near Bunkie, Louisiana, just as their careers were really starting to
take off internationally.
President Biden earned the ire of Border Patrol agents on Friday after endorsing the false claim that they were recorded “whipping” migrants who were attempting to cross the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas, earlier this week.
At
a press briefing Friday, Biden said the agents would “pay” for
allegedly lashing the Haitian migrants — a narrative popularized by
journalists on social media even though the video evidence shows no such
thing.
