CHARLESTOWN -- The downpour that was forecast didn't materialize until nighttime, but the threat was enough to keep attendance at yesterday's first full day of the Rhythm and Roots Festival well behind the pace of last year. "It's not the weather," organizer Chuck Wentworth grumbled "It's the forecast."

In the place of rain, strong winds took over. The wind was strong enough to blow the food off your fork. It was strong enough to make the suspended ceiling of the main stage swing perilously, strong enough to project the music from the main stage loud and clear to the workshop tent, occasionally disturbing the intimate vibe. It was "stronger than my bow," violinist Judy Hyman of The Horse Flies said during their set.

In the end, even the flying legs had to come down.

The kite, of a pair of women's legs in garters and stockings, has been a fixture at the festival for seven years. Mark Hoffer, of South Kingstown, said the legs first flew at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and that "we get yelled at if we don't bring them" to Charlestown.

After the legs whipped around unnervingly close to the ground for several hours, they had to be replaced by a flag with the legs embroidered on it. "They were kicking too many people in the face," said their other custodian, Bob Gray, of Jamestown. By the time headliners Los Lobos came on, it was gone too.

Los Lobos mixed the raucous guitar rock of older material such as "Is This All There Is?" and "Don't Worry Baby" with the Latino sway of "Chuco's Cumbia" from their forthcoming album The Town and The City. After hinting at their versatility, they took it over the top by bringing Marcia Ball and Steve Riley on stage for a loose jam that ripped through the Lobos cover collection, including Clifton Chenier's "All Night Long," "I Got Loaded" (with a snippet of "Not Fade Away") and the Grateful Dead's "Bertha" before returning for an encore of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl."

Last year's Rhythm and Roots festival came less than a week after Hurricane Katrina, and while more than one performer mentioned the ongoing situation in the Gulf Coast, it once again fell to Ball to make the musical connection explicit.

She came through again, not only turning "That's Enough of That Stuff" into a defiant anthem and stopping the clocks with Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" but bringing out a new Katrina-related song full of the fear and emotion of checking off the condition of various neighborhoods, not being able to contact people and, finally, the significance of the musicians' unyielding response. "The saints will march again," she sang over and over. Her set could have used more of her trademark piano pyrotechnics, though "Red Beans" and "Crawfishin'" filled the bill.

Last year, Juan LaBostrie got to the festival by swimming and walking out of his home in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and flying to the festival, where he was put to work backstage.

He's spent the past year "trying to put things back together," including moving into a new house after his was flooded. He expressed frustration with the bureaucratic slowdowns surrounding the rebuilding efforts, citing as an example the seven entities authorized to pick up seven kinds of garbage in the city, and four authorities that must approve and outfit a FEMA trailer before someone can live in it: "People have been living in hotels for three months with a trailer in front that they can't get in."

The building-permit process, he says, is also fraught with miscommunication and red tape: "A lot of people haven't started," because they're afraid of sinking money into a project that runs afoul of regulations.

LaBostrie's main project of the past year has been organizing Katrina's Piano Fund, one of several efforts to put instruments back in the hands of New Orleans musicians who lost the tools of their trade in the storm. He says the project, assisted by Klondike Sound, has gotten a "landslide" of applications and contributions of instruments.

He says the music business in New Orleans is "coming around," citing the Bank Street Bar, a nightclub which is back operating at full capacity. Right after the storm, he says, they had no electricity and served beer from an ice chest and had acoustic shows by candlelight.

Asked whether New Orleans has continued to receive the attention it deserved for the past year, he said, "I have to say emphatically, no." He says that government at all levels is more concerned with not getting cheated than with helping people rebuild.

He says that when he organized Katrina's Piano Fund, he told the people at Klondike Sound that roughly 20 percent of the people who applied for aid would probably be cheating: "Can we live with that?" He says Klondike said they could. Anyone who cheats, "it's in their heart. . . .

"If you go quick," he explained, "you'll go outside the lines. If you go through a coloring book fast, you'll go outside the lines. But you'll get the job done."

The Cajun and zydeco music that made this festival's name was well represented by heavyweights such as Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, as well as Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, who mixed Cajun music that went all the way back to the Ardoin family with modern touches such as swamp pop and ominous blues-like shuffles. And several relative unknowns made a sensation, particularly on the smaller stages.

The honky-tonk sextet Girl Howdy was smart and sweet-singing on the workshop stage. The John Jorgenson Quintet, an acoustic group who recalled the traditional hot jazz and gypsy jazz of 1930s Paris, played lilting waltzes and ballads, and went for the jugular on pedal-to-the-metal stomps such as the minor-key encore "Ghost Dance." James Hand brought the workshop-tent crowd to its feet with old-fashioned, Hank Williams-style honky-tonk.

Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble played on both the main stage and in the dance tent, and balanced traditional zydeco with soul and R&B, pulling out bayou versions of chestnuts such as "Cisco Kid" (on the main stage) and Kanye West's "Gold Digger" (in the tent). Accordionist Taylor, who played Ninigret several years ago as Geno Delafose's drummer, said that his unusual repertoire didn't usually ruffle traditionalists' feathers, because they know to stay away. "The people who actually come to my shows know what to expect."

Ann Savoy put in serious duty yesterday, playing with The Savoy Family Cajun Band on the main stage, with the accordion workshop (playing guitar behind husband Marc) and the women's workshop (with Ball and Hyman), then playing again with the band in the dance tent.

"We like that," she said of the heavy workload. She and her family have played many times in Rhode Island, and she called the Labor Day festival "a family tradition," recalling bringing sons Wilson and Joel (now in the band) to the old Cajun and Bluegrass Festival in their strollers.

She called Rhythm and Roots "one of the top festivals" of its type. "It's intimate at the same time it's huge."

rmassimo@projo.com / (401) 277-7206