Photo by Denny Culbert
For its almost thirty years of existence, Lafayette’s five-day international festival has remained free thanks to the help of approximately two thousand volunteers, who sport the coveted “Will Work For Festival” T-shirts.
A few years ago, under a trance during a Wilco encore at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, I struck up a conversation with two Midwesterners on sabbatical. The friendly corn-huskers began to tell me about their perpetual music-festival journey. These partners-in-crime had been to Chicago’s Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Arkansas’ Wakarusa, and Coachella in California—all the mainstream festivals.
My presumably less-extravagant exposure to music festivals is limited to regular appearances at my hometown Lafayette’s Festival International de Louisiane, while occasionally slipping over to the East Bank, when finances allow me, to catch the big names at New Orleans’ Fair Grounds. Because I’m inclined by nature (or perhaps nurture) to believe that everything in Lafayette is better, I began to preach the gospel of Festival International to these guys.
Competing with a Nels Cline guitar solo, I tried to describe Festival International: there are many local American acts, and some that have achieved significant fame, like bluesmen Gary Clark Jr. and Buddy Guy. But many are foreign acts, I said, usually big in their respective homelands but relatively unknown in the U.S. They come anyhow, often a long way, and to a little-known town.
To my new buddies, this was all fine and dandy, but a small-town ballad they’d already heard. Then I added the detail that snagged their attention from Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy: The festival is free.
The comment was off the cuff. The fact that “Festival”—as its regulars affectionately refer to it—is free was a fact that never caused me much pause; it’s just the status quo every last weekend of April back home. As Wilco’s encore concluded, I parted from the Midwesterners—who guaranteed they’d return to Louisiana to attend Festival International—tapping my head: How significant is it that Festival International is free?
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Festival International de Louisiane was established in 1986 as a non-profit organization to promote South Louisiana’s Francophone heritage; it has since expanded to encompass all of downtown Lafayette and officially spans five days. Each year, Festival offers over one hundred performances (not counting street performances) on five main stages as well as a couple of large markets showcasing local and international art. Festival kicks off on the Wednesday before the last weekend of April, but shows begin in local bars the Monday preceding to get “Festival Week” rolling. Running on a budget of a little over $1 million, Festival’s largest source of revenue is beverage sales, which account for about thirty percent of the profits.
Pictured: Multiple stages are scattered throughout downtown Lafayette, making the festival a walkable affair. Drink booths are prominently situated throughout the festival area as beverage revenue is one of the primary money-makers for this free festival. Photo by Chris Ortte.
Because it’s a free event, attendance is difficult to track, but Marketing Director April Courville said they made their first attempt last year. Using a 2007 economic study as a point of comparison (the study estimated that 325,000 people attended the fest that year), directors estimated that Festival saw some 400,000 attendees in 2014.
To keep a festival of this size free, there’s a critical need for a large group of volunteers to show up each year. And they do—like mosquitos in July (sans the pestering). Typically, Festival boasts about two thousand volunteers each donating anywhere between four to one hundred hours of time. Mon dieu!
After all my years carousing around Festival, I hadn’t ever considered how imperative volunteers are to its success, nor, I’m ashamed to admit, thought to volunteer myself. Only for the sake of journalism did I finally commit, and it took me all of four minutes to sign up online for three different three-hour shifts. Because I joined late, I suspected I’d be assigned the scraps, left in some rhythm-less corner checking my wristwatch often. As it turned out, I enjoyed my assignment so much that I volunteered for extra shifts.
Arriving early to my first shift Friday afternoon, I decided to catch a little buzz with a margarita. It was Festival, after all. I popped into a hometown favorite of mine, a filling station-turned-restaurant—cleverly named The Filling Station—just across the street from the Volunteer Center tent. While tightening up my small-talk skills with the barkeep, I mentioned I was volunteering this year for the first time. He promptly refilled my tumbler (on the house) and explained, “Without volunteers like you, downtown restaurants like us wouldn’t have such an incredible week.” Then he kindly added, “Festival simply could not happen.” I felt that good Catholic guilt rise up, seeing as how it hadn’t been my idea to volunteer in the first place, and doubled my tip.
It was time to mosey over to the Volunteer Center tent to greet some fellow volunteers. Debbie and George deGravelle were passing out the volunteer t-shirts. I asked them if they had volunteered before. “Of course!” Debbie popped back. “When you love something, you’ve got to give back to it.” Turns out they had been volunteering for over a decade. They were, it seems, the people to whom the barkeep was really referring.
Some volunteers sign up on a whim, like Jonathon Nassour, a former classmate of mine, whom I hadn’t seen for many moons. He explained that he had some spare time, so he decided to come lend a hand. Other volunteers operate like miniature Mardi Gras krewes, manning the same popular volunteer shifts with the same cohorts each year. “Many folks come together every year in a sort of Festival Reunion … as an opportunity to reunite in a fulfilling and constructive way with friends that they lose touch with during the year,” explained one volunteer-area chairperson, Michelle Constantin, over email correspondence.
One coveted volunteer position is the Tipsy Tent across Jefferson Street from the Fais Do Do stage. Tipsy Tent shifts are typically the first to go when volunteer slots open up. Those who feel inclined to tip the volunteers at the Tipsy Tent after purchasing their cocktail or Abita beer—that tip constituting a donation to Festival—are rewarded by a cacophony of ‘Cadian yelps, bullhorns, and cowbells that never fails to catch a newcomer by surprise. Amidst this ruckus, I began to understand that volunteers do more than just mix drinks, sell tickets, give directions, or pick up trash. Volunteers contribute energy to the atmosphere, just as the bands and the crowds do.
That these same volunteers also help to keep the festival free also affects the event’s general demeanor. People may come and go as they please, with no re-entry signs to trap them or aching billfolds to weigh them down. No one is staking flags in the ground like a conquistador declaring his territory; there’s no whining about concession prices; Festival is a Lafayette holiday.
Festival has been, and will always be, a purely feel-good weekend in Lafayette. Your soul lightens and everyone plays to his or her own drum: from the half-naked child playing in the fountains at Parc Sans Souci to the crazed, dreadlocked hippies flailing to the music. But those good vibes exist thanks to people like Michelle Constantin, whose impressive Festival International résumé would earn her a Ph.D. in volunteering, if such a degree existed, and to the thousands of other volunteers who sport their turquoise “Will Work for Festival” t-shirts like badges of honor.
Pointing to the heroic efforts of sponsors, volunteers, and a handful of slightly paid staffers, Festival organizers stress Lafayette’s unique ability to pull off the event year after year. Constantin described the support as “a testament to the high caliber and generous spirit of the Lafayette community.” This generous spirit—so well portrayed throughout Festival International—is evidence of the pull that Lafayette has over natives and visitors alike.
We get slack for this perpetual state of reminiscence, always pining for the “Flattes.” One can’t explain it from the inside, and one can’t understand it from the outside. You just need to experience it yourself, preferably at Festival, and perhaps as a volunteer.
Volunteer Opps
Festival International is registering volunteers now for the 2015 Festival taking place April 22—26 in Lafayette, LA. Visit festivalinternational.org/volunteer to sign up!
Organizers of the Baton Rouge Blues Festival are looking for volunteers to help out on April 11 in three categories: festival ambassadors for the extroverts, general volunteers for the easy-going, or beverage volunteers for those that like to be at the center of the action. There are some perks to volunteering, including a free Blues Fest T-shirt, admittance to a restricted-access volunteer area, a post-festival thank you party, and a one year membership to the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation. Sign up at batonrougebluesfestival.org/volunteer.
