The sunset resort

I'm not alone in having memories of the funky resort known, at the time of its demise, as the Sunrise Resort.

I first knew it as Ted Hilton's when in junior high, and high school, we had end of year outings at the Moodus resort, hard by the Salmon River.

Decades later when I returned to host the first Cajun and Zydeco Music and Arts Festival, it was like stepping into a time warp. Nothing had changed.

That Cajun and Zydeco Music Festival lasted for more than a decade, but now that the state owns the resort, one wonders if that festival, or others, like the annual dixieland jazz band festival will continue.

This week the Moodus noise was creole

The funky, unintentionally retro Sunrise resort in Moodus held it's regular Cajun and Zydeco Music and Arts Festival over the weekend. Formerly held, for years, on the same weekend as the Blast from the Bayou at Strawberry Park, the festival now takes advantage of a dance crowd willing to hang around for consecutive weekends. I saw a bit of the festival on Sunday, and in talking to festival-goers, reports are that despite the steamy, Lousiana-like weather, the dance tent was packed to overflowing on Saturday.

It's interesting to note that the Cajun/Zydeco dance crowd in New England is aging. Most of these folks have danced here for decades to a music which found a second home in the old North. Down home in Louisiana, the music has caught on again, in a big way, with a new generation of teens and twenty-somethings who love the old sounds, and the idea that dancing is the best form of social interaction on a Saturday night.