Residents, tourists and visitors of all ages received a blast from the past Saturday as they basked in colonial French culture at BREC’s Magnolia Mound Plantation Day.
Magnolia Mound Plantation, located just minutes from the University’s campus off Nicholson Drive, hosted hundreds of guests for a free celebration of the plantation’s French heritage.
Plantation Day featured Cajun music, dancing, tours of the building, demonstrations of colonial skills, jam sessions, traditional games and a French conversation room. Video: Plantation Day
The event exhibited what times were like when French immigrant Armand Duplantier owned the plantation in the early 19th century, said Clarence Moritz, Cajun disc jockey and activities coordinator.
“We want to take history from then and share it with young people now,” said Danieta Stewart, member of Louisiane Vintage Dancers.
The group demonstrated dances from the early 1800s Regency/Empire Era including waltzes, reels and circle dances.
Volunteers donned era costumes from the “Jane Austen period” that included floor-length skirts, long-sleeved blouses and bonnets for women and flowing shirts and slacks for men, most of which were homemade, Stewart said.
The Renaissance Cadienne, a folkloric-theater troupe based in Lafayette, also offered a dance performance and lessons on Cajun waltzing. President Harry Leonard shared techniques to avoid kicking dance partners and stepping on toes.
New York resident Linda McIntyre followed Leonard’s instructions and said learning to Cajun dance was “as easy as walking.” She said she hopes to bring Cajun culture to New York when she returns.
Renaissance Cadienne has traveled to France, Quebec and Belgium to share Louisiana’s traditional songs and dances, Leonard said.
“Our focus is to preserve Cajun culture,” Leonard said.
Throughout the day, the French language conversation room hosted by the University’s French Department received a steady stream of visitors stopping by to chat in French.
Adelaide Russo, French studies professor, said people of all skill levels, including a group from Quebec, visited the room to polish their French and engage in casual conversation.
Cajun music dominated the atmosphere with sounds of fiddles audible from all over the plantation grounds.
Event-goers enjoyed a performance by the Choupique Cajun band and had opportunities all day to participate in Cajun-music jam sessions.
Musicians, including Alex Adams, chemical engineering senior, sat in a circle on the grounds playing fiddles, guitars, accordions and cello.
Adams, a New Iberia native, plays guitar and accordion and said he enjoys playing Cajun music because he was submerged in the culture growing up.
Younger musicians also had the opportunity to jam Cajun style at Clarence’s Cajun Music for Kids, hosted by Moritz. Children played accordions, fiddles, washboards and triangles.
Children played traditional games like Native American ring toss. The game is made of a circular buffalo leg bone attached to a wooden stick by a string.
Children also enjoyed tossing a toy made from a corn husk, competing in an egg-cracking contest and building wooden boxes in the plantation’s carpentry shop.
Julia Hooker, Baton Rouge native, sold handmade soap and demonstrated how it was made in colonial times.
“A mark of a good housewife was if she could make good soap,” Hooker said.
Soap is made from a combination of lye and animal fat or vegetable oils, Hooker said.
The mixture is cooked for four hours then poured into a mold where it sits for 30 days, Hooker explained.
Tracy Comeaux demonstrated the process of spinning wool into thread and explained the evolution of the spinning wheel.
“Spinning is therapeutic for me and is a way to preserve my ancestors’ heritage,” Comeaux said. “Not many people in this generation can say their grandmothers spun their own thread.”
Demonstrators also presented traditional forms of basket and pottery making, wood works, weaving and blacksmithing.
“We want to share the culture so it doesn’t go away,” said Marty Ernewein, LVD member.
 
 
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Contact Emily Herrington at [email protected]