Pirate Weekend
Lousiaiana Renaissance Festival
Faire Grounds
Hammond, Louisiana
Nov. 9 (Festival runs every weekend through Dec 6-7)
When my friend, a seasoned Renaissance festival pro, heard I was going to my very first Renfest, she had one piece of advice: No matter what I did, I had to find a way to eat a turkey leg, loaded jester chips and nitrogen ice cream.
This weekend at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival was pirate weekend, which says more about everybody’s costuming than the actual contents of the festival. American Renaissance festivals are notoriously a mishmash of different time periods blended with a little bit of fantasy – it’s old-timey vibes not history. Louisiana’s Renaissance Festival was no exception, but it managed to be a magical time nonetheless.
Shortly after entering, the festival-goer encounters performances like jousting or swordfighting at staging areas of different sizes. They have set showtimes throughout the day, so if that’s a priority, show up early so you get a seat where you can actually see what’s going on. But if you walk a little farther to the lake, you’ll hear the gentle ethereal sounds of a hammered dulcimer played by Vince Conaway.
The dulcimer has the same mechanics as a piano except the low notes are on the other side, he explained to me while playing. He’s been playing for 25 years, and can talk while playing. The music he was playing at the time was composed by Galileo’s father.
“He was a really important composer,” Conaway explained. “He just gets overshadowed because his son invented science.”
Conaway doesn’t have a stage for his performance, though he deserves one. On pirate weekend, he looks like a guy busking beside the lake on a beautiful day. He's enthusiastic answering questions about the hammered dulcimer, and his love for the instrument and music are palpable. Sometimes, he said, his eyes turn red because he gets so into the music, he forgets to blink.
It’s little details like this that make LA Ren fest feel a little historically grounded. For some, the hammered dulcimer music is just the background music for walking from one part of the faire grounds to the other, for others (like me), it’s a main event. But regardless if people stop or not, Conaway is offering people a gift.
On the other end of the spectrum, the concessions at this festival represent the most American and least historical element of the event. This is not a criticism; the contrast is just deeply funny. If social media is to be believed, LA Ren fest is an outlier among its contemporaries for selling out of its turkey legs as early as 12 p.m. (so no, I did not get one but I’m in good company as people who lived during the actual Renaissance didn’t either). Nitrogen ice cream is surprisingly violent in nature. The tiny box of ice cream erupts in a litany of tiny explosions when exposed to the air. It’s like very potent Pop Rocks meets Dippin’ Dots.
The blend of the old and new gives Ren fests their character and charm. It’s a place where people can eat freshly fried chips loaded with cheese sauce, bacon and green onions while watching armored men jousting on horses or shoot paintballs out of slingshot at Disney themed villains. Historical or not, that’s the magic of Ren fest.
