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W e d n e s d ay, F e b r u a ry 5, 2025
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After more than 25 years, it’s last call for the Cajun Cousins band Every Sunday for the past 25 years and 10 months, Cajun singer and songwriter Ivy Dugas left his home in Vinton at 8:30 a.m. and headed east on Interstate 10 for the one-hour and 40-minute drive to Breaux Bridge. Fellow members of the Cajun Cousins band, who lived in Herman Orange and WinFuselier nie, Texas, Lake Charles and Mire, weren’t far behind. Band set-up began at noon. The three-hour dance started at 2 p.m. before band members faced sunshine, storms, traffic jams or whatever awaited on their treks back home. When word got out that the band’s Sunday routine was ending, Dugas started seeing unexpected faces in the crowd. “A lot of musicians came in and gave their respect,” said Dugas. “Boy, that means a lot. You see some of the top-notch musicians of the day coming in that front door to hear you play one more time. That’s an awesome feeling.” A sellout crowd is expected Sunday when Jackie Caillier and the Cajun Cousins end their quarter-century run at La Poussiere in Breaux Bridge. The 70-year-old club is considered to be the last of Cajun music’s original dancehalls. Various health issues are causing the band to retire after 28 years together. The retirement silences one of Cajun music’s most beloved bands, with hits like “The Gravel Road,” “Little Short Pants,” “Le Whiskey, C’est Mon Ami” and the crowd sing-along, “BO Sparkle Waltz.” The songs are gems among more than 100 originals Dugas has penned in his legendary career. The often sentimental songs had La Poussiere owner Lawrence Patin enjoying the music as much as his customers. “Ivy and I are about the same age,” said Patin. “We remember the generation of our grandparents and how we grew up. I remember going down the gravel road and visiting my grandparents. “A lot of the songs he wrote are about those experiences. Good feeling stuff. It wasn’t about bar drunks and chasing women. It was good stuff, the toils of life,” he said. Real-life toils have Dugas looking forward to freedom on Sundays and beyond. Before the COVID pandemic, Dugas was playing five times a week with the Cousins and other groups. But radiation treatments during a cancer bout brought on depression and took him off the bandstand. Dugas returned when his health improved, but feelings of bandstand burnout
PROVIDED PHOTO FROM THE NFL
Queen Tahj Williams has created an intricately beaded Mardi Gras Indian patch for the 2025 Super Bowl logo.
THIS ART FORM IS A PASSION Meet the Mardi Gras Indian queen and cybersecurity wiz who designed the Super Bowl logo
BY DOUG MacCASH
Eagle tribe. These days, if she’s not at work swatting software bugs, she’s putting in hour after hour after hour sewing her 2025 suit, which she’ll debut on Mardi Gras morning. Each year, Black Indian Maskers make a new, unique suit. It’s an enormous commitment of time.
Staff writer
Tahj Williams says she’s not giving up her day job. Even if her art career is blowing up and she could probably parlay her recent successes into a full-time art career. Williams, 26, was commissioned by the NFL to create the official logo for Super Bowl LIX, and a design to decorate the tickets to the big game coming up in her hometown on Feb. 9. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, with immediate international exposure. There’s a story about Williams in Essence magazine this month and innumerable other media sources. If that weren’t enough, the folks at the Raising Cane’s asked her to produce their 2025 Mardi Gras poster. Williams is certainly on a roll, but she’s not going to leave her career as a cybersecurity specialist with Microsoft, where she says she “fixes a lot of bugs and outages.” She worked too hard to get it to consider walking away.
‘I want to do that’
FILE PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Tahj Williams
Orleans. They’re not conventional graphic designs. Instead, they’re composed of intricate patterns of seed-sized beads, just like the decorations found on lavish Mardi Gras Indian costumes, called suits. The age-old Mardi Gras Indian tradition blends elements of African and Native American heritagWhat’s a Mardi Gras Indian? es. And Williams isn’t just an artist Williams’ designs for the Su- inspired by Black Masking Indiper Bowl logo, the tickets and the ans — as the custom is also known. Cane’s poster might be a bit bewil- She’s a participant in the culture. Williams is a queen of the Golden dering to people outside of New
Williams grew up in Hollygrove. She thinks she probably got her artistic instincts from her mom, who owned a hair-styling business. Williams went to the all-girl Louise S. McGehee School, where she was reportedly the only girl on the middle school football team, and captain to boot. As a child, she said, her family always set out on Mardi Gras morning to see the Black Indian Maskers dance, sing and compete with one another for the most spectacular suits. She was mesmerized the first time she saw a female Indian masker. She still gropes to find the words for the experience. “I said to myself ‘This woman doesn’t even look real,’ she recalled. “She’s so beautiful, out of sight. Whatever she’s doing, I want to do that.”
ä See WILLIAMS, page 2G
ä See BAND, page 2G
Does Louisiana have Swedish connections? Sweden native Bror Anders Wikstrom’s design for ‘D – Dragon’ float in ‘The Alphabet’ parade for the Krewe of Proteus, 1904. The New Orleans Museum of Art hosted an exhibit of Wikstrom’s Mardi Gras designs in 2018.
PROVIDED PHOTO
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
The occasion not only holds a place in New Orleans history but also that of Louisiana’s Swedish culture. In fact, Cecilia Kjellgren, the honorary Swedish consul for Louisiana, counts it as one of the highlights of Louisiana’s Swedish culture.
Louisiana is probably best known for its French and Spanish influences, but Swedish? Not so much. But the Scandinavian country’s influence on the state goes further back and deeper The first Swede than many realize. Legendary opera and conThough her district also cert singer Jenny Lind visited includes Mississippi and AlaNew Orleans in 1851 and per- bama, Kjellgren is based in New Orleans. formed 13 sold-out concerts Which is why Kjellgren not in the St. Charles Theatre.
only asked Curious Louisiana to highlight this subject but also offered up examples of Swedish contributions to Louisiana’s culture and history. “The very first Swede that landed here in New Orleans met with the founding French father Jean-Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville, in 1721,” she said. The first Swede was a soldier named Charles Frederick D’Arensbourg, born Carl Friedrich Arensburg in
ä See CURIOUS, page 2G