Natchitoches Waltz

The Natchitoches Waltz was written as a tribute to the town in Louisiana where Marsha and I were living in 1988. The idea of naming waltz (or any other dance tune) after a town comes from the Cajun tradition in Southern Louisiana. There are French cultural traditions native to the Cane River country around Natchitoches, too, but they tend to be from a different French source: a more affluent strain which came via New Orleans,  Mobile or the Caribbean, perhaps, as opposed to the farmers of Poitou and Vienne who emigrated first to the Maritime provinces of Canada and then were chased out of "Acadiana" by the English to becomes Cajuns in the bayous and prairies of South Louisiana.

Grand Opening of Conna's John Folse-backed
cafe at Ducournau Square.

I always thought, however, that applying one
state tradition to a related region was a perfectly acceptable innovation, though it would now be a great idea to do a version of the song with different instrumentation:
perhaps piano and cello, to give it that "je ne sais quoi" which is so Natchitoches. I know just the two musicians: Steve Wells and     Richard Rose.

Obviously these two are not waltzing.
Young Conna on the right.

Natchitoches Waltz is so much much associated with Conna Cloutier that it would be pointless to pretend otherwise. There was something about the song that she felt expressed the historical spirit of the town. The song doesn't belong to a particular time; it could have sprung from almost any moment of the entire history of Natchitoches. Conna asked for it to be played at almost any gathering she attended.