Crawdads And Grits: A Song History
"Crawdads And Grits" is a mountain dulcimer piece composed by John Keane, a Shreveport, Louisiana, musician with a degree in music education who performs with Karen Keane.[1][2] It appears in his 15 Originals, a Fingers Of Steel book of 43 pages whose fifteen tunes are all his own, and it is listed in DAD tuning.[1] The sources consulted here mention no recording of the tune and no explanation of its name.[1][2]
Strasbourg Factory, Plate with Crayfish and lid, faience, 1750–1775. Shown for its crayfish; it has no connection to the tune.
By way of background, crawdad and crawfish are both names for the crayfish, a lobster relative found almost entirely in fresh water; Britannica puts the number of species above 500 and says North America is home to most of them.[3] Louisianans call the animal crawfish and nickname it the mudbug, and Ryan Brasseaux writes that through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was looked down on there as something only the poor ate, an attitude the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, first held in 1959, helped to reverse.[4]
Grits, the other half of the title, are a coarse-ground grain porridge, hominy in particular, usually made from dried corn kernels, and Britannica describes the dish as popular across the American South.[5]
Sources
- Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane, 15 Originals".
- DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Crayfish".
- 64 Parishes: "Crawfish Boils".
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Grits".
- Image: Strasbourg Factory, Plate with Crayfish and lid, faience, 1750–1775. The Cleveland Museum of Art.