Keepin’ it real

Alex Coolman

Doug Kershaw learned a lesson at an early age: If you want to

support yourself as a musician, you’d better put on a pretty good show.

Kershaw, who is known as “The Ragin’ Cajun” of the violin, started

playing the fiddle at age 5. Back then, he and his family played gigs for

$10 a pop to support themselves.

“When I was a young kid in these nightclubs,” Kershaw said, “the only

way we could make money is if [the audience] danced.”

Today, though the years have rewarded him with fame, he keeps that

initial lesson close to his heart.

Kershaw will play July 29 at the Orange County Fair, where

Newport-Mesa residents will get a chance to feel the Southern-tinged

boogie that’s kept the 64-year-old performer in bows and rosin.

The type of music Kershaw plays is a mixture of white Cajunstyles,

which emphasize the use of the accordion and violin, and the zydeco

syncopation that emerged from the black culture of Louisiana.

“It’s Cajun songs done by the blacks,” Kershaw said of the zydeco

feeling. “It’s got a little more rhythm to it, a different rhythm to it.”

In Kershaw’s hands, this style is not only rhythmic, but often

performed at a breakneck pace. The Ragin’ Cajun is famed for wearing out

bows at his shows as his furious fiddling frays horsehair into something

resembling a snarled mass of split ends.

The approach to playing, he said, is something he developed from a

combination of early influences and his own sense of what the music

should sound like.

As a child growing up in Tiel Ridge, La., Kershaw heard players such

as Harry “The Cajun Fiddle King” Choates on jukeboxes.

“I concentrated on why people liked these people,” Kershaw said. “I

tried to take a little from this person, a little from that person.”

But his way of playing has never become particularly clinical.

“Mostly it comes from my heart,” he said, “because I don’t pay

attention to what I do on the fiddle.”

One thing that has been deliberate, though, is his effort to keep the

music pure. Despite pressure from record companies to move in a more

mainstream direction, Kershaw has stuck to a very traditional sound.

“I do the Cajun, and I keep it as close to that as I can,” he said. “I

mean, I do everything, but when I do real Cajun, I do real Cajun.”

The result of this effort, over a period of many decades, has been

that Kershaw’s style of music, instead of becoming increasingly watered

down, has grown increasingly influential.

While Kershaw himself is not a mega-seller, he says you can hear his

sound swelling in mainstream music today.

“Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song, ‘Down at the Twist and Shout,”’ he

said. “That’s really Cajun.”

And the years of sticking to his musical guns have also meant that

Kershaw’s style has become distinct. His ragin’ sensibility informs

everything he plays.

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he said. “I could do a Spanish song and

it would still come out like Doug Kershaw.”

WHAT: Doug Kershaw, “The Ragin’ Cajun”

WHERE: The Orange County Fair’s Arlington Theater, 88 Fair Drive,

Costa Mesa

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday

HOW MUCH: Free with fair admission

PHONE: (714) 708-FAIR (3247)