Friday night, Irma Thomas plays the Acadiana Center for the Arts‘ award-winning Louisiana Crossroads program in Lafayette. The show takes place in the James Devin Moncus Theater at 8 p.m., and it’s the first Louisiana Crossroads concert since musician and producer Dirk Powell was named as the series director. What does he bring to the table? Connections, he says. For more information, check the center’s website. “I’m able to bring the series with me, and to have an intimate connection with people that I can bring in,” Powell says. “That’s pretty unique.”
Dirk Powell
Louisiana Crossroads, the Lafayette-based concert series, will be planning and arranging all of its concerts this season, alongside the filming of a TV pilot, under Powell’s direction. Powell’s professional career, while exploring and expanding the boundaries of Appalachian music, has earned him collaborations with famous musicians such as Joan Baez, Loretta Lynn, Sting, and Jack White, to name a mere few. In addition, Powell’s collaborations on films, most notably Cold Mountain, award-winning documentaries, and television shows, such as Transatlantic Sessions, expand his reach into the music and entertainment world. Louisiana Crossroads has already established itself as a successful concert series, record producer, and economic development initiative for Louisiana.
“It’s hard to find any place in the world that hasn’t been influenced by Louisiana music on one level or another,” Powell says. That places a heavy burden on Louisiana Crossroads to create a musical line-up that is varied enough to reflect the long arms of Louisiana music. Powell feels the culture is unique because in Louisiana, “Music is a part of everyday life and people live it in a way that they don’t in a lot of other places.” The goal is to present concerts that exemplify the history of the music and its connection to the present, but also to instruct using the music itself. For instance, the opening show of the new season will be a display of the history of the drum set, which, according to Powell, was born when New Orleans musicians found old Civil War drums and began to invent the trap set. The show will feature Mississippi fife and drum music as well as a “massive celebration” at its conclusion.
Other season highlights will include a tribute to Little Walter, who grew up in Marksville, Louisiana; a salute to the accordion; a collaboration concert featuring the Canadian group De Temps Antan alongside local Acadian and Creole musicians; and a show highlighting the growing Cuban influence in Louisiana.
Louisiana Crossroads is filming a television pilot featuring Allen Toussaint and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band to name a few, with the hopes that it will get picked up and made into a multi-part series. Powell thinks a collaborative television show is a natural. “Every time I describe the idea to people, they think, ‘Why doesn’t that exist already?’” he says. Powell describes it as a marriage between Transatlantic Sessions and Austin City Limits.
Dirk Powell wants to focus on the history of Louisiana music, but in doing so, he wants to celebrate the melting pot that became Louisiana music and still exists today. “For instance, the other day I was in Lafayette at El Ranchito and there’s this great accordion player from Mexico named Soso Peña playing cumbias in one night club,” he says. “Half a mile away there’s Lil’ Nathan playing zydeco at El Sid O’s nightclub, so in a way they’re playing for their own community, but here this all is, still cooking up.”
