Jo Reed: 2009 National Heritage Fellow Queen Ida is an acordian-playing Zydeco legend. She brought her Louisiana roots with her when she moved to California when she was 17. Here she discusses her parents' decision to move the family to San Francisco in 1947.
Queen Ida: My mom and my dad both had visited my sister that had moved to California, but she was married and her husband was stationed in San Francisco bay area. But when my dad came he loved the weather, he liked everything about San Francisco. So he came back home and told my mom "I like it, so when you take your trip up there, let me know if you like it, if you like it, then we'll move." And my mom said "Just like that?" <Laughs> He said "Yeah" he said "I'm tired of farming because we have to pray from morning to night every season" and he said "I'm tired" and my mom came, she loved it, she called him back and told him "Yes I like it." He said "Well okay, find a place, find a house and call me and tell me what it costs and I'll send the money." And that's how we moved to California.
Jo Reed: Until I read your book, I really had no idea that there was such a large population of folks from Louisiana in California.
Queen Ida: Yes, however San Francisco's population was- was and still is much less than Los Angeles. Most people moved and stopped in LA area. But my dad wanted to come to San Francisco because my sister was living here and it was like the whole family were back together again.
Jo Reed: Well you got married, you had three kids, you drove a school bus?
Queen Ida: Yes after I got married, I had three kids and they were all in school and I decided to do some part time work, tired of doing the same work at home, you know, being a housewife and washing, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids and I decided to find a part time job and then I read the ad in the newspaper they wanted school bus drivers and that's how I started a part time job as driving a school bus - which was what, two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, and that was perfect.
Jo Reed: During all that time your accordion so to speak was in the closet, you weren't playing and then one day you took it out of the closet, what made you do that?
Queen Ida: Yes. Bored, you know how you can get bored, you wanna do something. I picked up the accordion and I -- oh plus I was listening to the music, I had the radio on and I heard Credence Clearwater and that sound was so much like zydeco sound because they had a big tub that's what they call a gut bucket as a base line and I thought, Oh my goodness, this is great. I grabbed the accordion.
Jo Reed: And meantime your brother was playing in a zydeco band wasn't he?
Queen Ida: Yes.
Jo Reed: And I have to say, Louisiana's two great gifts to the rest of the country, cooking and music and he decided he would combine that to give people a real taste of Creole culture. He was gonna give away Gumbo at his concerts.
Queen Ida: Right, he did that - very instrumental. We would play at small clubs because that's what he was doing in that time playing the clubs, the circuit and they would advertise and he would tell the promoter, "Look we gonna make Gumbo, we gonna bring it and we gonna give it away, so they'll know the culture and the food what we Creole use in Louisiana." And we did that and you'd be surprised at the amount of people that came and, of course, the word of mouth is really how we really were able to get our music around and about.
Jo Reed: That was National Heritage Fellow Queen Ida. To learn more about how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog at www.arts.gov.
I'm Josephine Reed, thanks for listening.