Liberty Theater Radio Show
The Liberty Theater show was Cajun radio dressed for a stage, but not made polite by it. From a historic theater in downtown Eunice, built in 1924, the program joined live music, French announcing, comedy, storytelling, local pride, and public broadcasting into one Saturday-night ritual. It ran for roughly thirty years on KRVS, KJJB, and other stations, with some public-access television airings as well.
The project came out of the mid-1980s, when the National Park Service was developing what became the Jean Lafitte Acadian Cultural Center in Eunice. Mayor Curtis Joubert saw the theater as a tourist draw, while Marc and Ann Savoy, Dewey Balfa, Barry Ancelet, and other local advocates understood it as something deeper: a way to put Cajun culture in public, not as a relic, but as a weekly performance. The format itself was new for many locals. Cajun music was usually heard in dance halls; the Liberty put it on a seated theater stage, where children, elders, tourists, musicians, and French speakers could all occupy the same room.
A 1986 tribute to Cajun radio helped prepare the ground. The Hackberry Ramblers performed on a set recalling their 1930s KVOL radio days, while Floyd Soileau and Revon Reed revived older comic material. By July 1987, Let the Bon Temps Rouler Cajun Radio Show was airing on KJJB, with Ancelet as host. He insisted on announcing in French, despite resistance from the park service. Dewey Balfa answered the objection with a simple rebuke: “Ma’am, we are Americans.” (You can read the full anecdote in French in the Morning; it’s a good one. I think it’s on pages 116-117.)
The show, later known as Rendez-Vous des Cajuns, became a kind of family-friendly cousin to Fred’s Lounge: more orderly, but still alive. It featured major Cajun groups, Creole and zydeco performers, storytellers, and comedians. It left KRVS in 2019 after storm damage closed the theater, but its long run proved that French could still hold a microphone, a stage, and an audience.
Further info:
Official site here – the theater is supposed to re-open. Fingers crossed it happens!
GREAT article on the Liberty Theater Radio show from the magazine 64 Parishes
For you academic types – some theorizing about the show here =
Mark Mattern, “Cajun Music, Cultural Revival: Theorizing Political Action in Popular Music,” Popular Music and Society 22, no. 2 (1998): 31–48.