KnowLA, Darrell Bourque and Amédé Ardoin

Efforts are underway to honor one of Louisiana’s most influential recording artists, Amédé Ardoin (1898-1941), a Creole musician who merits a biographical entry in KnowLA, The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana (knowla.org). Ardoin was a seminal but mysterious figure in Louisiana history, and he remains something of an enigma since he met an unfortunate fate in the last years of his life as an incarcerated mental patient at Central Louisiana Hospital in Pineville.

Former state poet laureate Darrell Bourque recently published a collection of inverted sonnets dedicated to Ardoin, entitled If you abandon me, comment je vas faire: An Amede Ardoin Songbook, selections of which will appear in the Fall 2014 edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas.

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