Texas Rice Festival: A Document Analysis

Every year in a small town in Texas known as Winnie, various people come from all over the state to experience the festivities during the last week of September and the first week of October. The Texas Rice Festival is something texas country music fans along with carnival lovers come to let loose and have some fun. This fun filled two weeks starts off with the annual BBQ Cook-Off and continues with many live performances, auctions, carnival rides, as well as a extraordinary pageant. During this year 's Texas Rice Festival, I had the privilege of attending two concerts as well as the pageant. I listened and watched in awe of Wayne Toups on Friday, October 2nd, 2015, Kevin Fowler on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, and I even got to listen

Wayne Toups is the leader of a band that plays strictly Cajun and Zydeco music originally from Louisiana, making them referred to as ethnic content. In the Cajun music industry, there are many different subgenres of Cajun music itself. These would be Traditional Cajun music, Country and Texas swing Cajun music, Dancehall Cajun music, Cajun ‘Renaissance’ music, and Contemporary Cajun music. Wayne Toups is in the Contemporary Cajun music with the type of music he plays today. This style of music involves a heavy influence of rock, R&B, blues, soul, and zydeco, but producing a less traditional and more contemporary sound. The history of the subgenre Contemporary Cajun music has been improved and updated by Wayne Toups and many other Cajun artists since the 1940’s. Together, Wayne Toups and his band, also referred to as Zydecajun have won numerous uplifting awards along with their first Grammy for Best Regional Boots in the year of 2013. Instruments accompanied in playing Cajun music mostly involve an accordion, violin, and sometimes a harmonica along with drums, an acoustic guitar, and a keyboard to help keep their music upbeat and lifting. Before that night,

He made his appearance around eight-thirty that night and finished close to midnight. In the beginning of his career, Fowler was known as a Southern hard-rock singer and songwriter with a band by the name of ‘Dangerous Toys’ for eight years before he realized that hard-rock wasn’t the genre of music he was really passionate about. Soon after his change involving his career, he found that Texas country music was what he enjoyed to sing, write, and perform for others. Texas country can also be referred to as ‘Red Dirt’ country music and was originated in Texas and Oklahoma. The essential instrument is playing Texas country is mostly known as an acoustic guitar and artists tend to consider this type of music to have diverse and distinctive voices with traditionally a male dominate vocalist. Kevin Fowler put on an amazing show that kept everyone on their feet and singing loud with pride, much like Wayne Toups. Everywhere I looked, country music fans at the