BeauSoleil Quartet: Cajun Music from Louisiana

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC welcome to the Library of Congress my name is Betsy Peterson I'm the director of the American Folklife Center here and yes we may Arkansas - it's a beautiful day today when it's really nice that you all came in to hear some great music on behalf of the South I want to welcome you and we're going to hear a fabulous hour of some great cajun music we've got any a heritage fellow recipient Michael do say with us today and other members of the both alia Cortes David do say Mitchell Reid and Billy we're but first a little word about the homegrown concert series the homegrown concert series is a series that the American Folklife Center puts on we've been doing it for quite a while and it's an opportunity for us to work with partners with folklorist ethnomusicologists and other cultural specialists from throughout the country who work with us to identify and select some of the very best musicians dancers narrators to come and share their art with all of us with all of you in this wonderful setting so it's a great honor to work with them and today's concert is no different our partners for today's concert are the Kennedy Center millennium stage and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which officially starts tomorrow and this concert is also part of an effort featuring the for highlighting and celebrating the NEA national heritage fellowship program which who which is in its 35th year this year and we are proud to be associated with it and in fact have that collection here in the American Folklife Center so today our performance is also going to be webcast we record these concerts so they'll be available in the future for future generations and for people around the world so with that said and as a reminder to you if you have any electronic I cellphone etc etc please turn it off now or you will always be in our archive and maybe maybe that's what you want but now just a little bit of background about Cajun music the music of Louisiana Cajuns descends from the song and fiddle tunes of French speakers who migrated from France to Canada in the 17th century and then made their way down to Louisiana in the 18th century in Cajun music blends the musical traditions of those french-speaking folks and it merges and blends with other cultural traditions European Native American and African American and then along the way throw in a little bit of country-western blues and pas for four decades the Beau Soleil quartet have been taking these traditional ingredients and mixing them with a collective percussion acoustic guitar finger-picking styles flap ticking styles and bringing a really open creative attitude to the music that they play Beausoleil was the first Cajun band to win a Grammy Award in 1998 and they added a second in 2008 and in 2011 they were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame but both fillets particulars later of Cajun music reflects very much the vision of the bandleader Michael do say and he has been a lifelong student of Cajun music from an early age he has sought out and studied with every Cajun master musician that he could find including Fiddler's like Dewey baltha dennis mcgee and Connery Fontenot for his contributions to Cajun culture dusa was honored with a national heritage fellowship in 2005 the highest honor given to traditional artists in the United States and in awarding the fellowship the NEA called Michael perhaps the single most important figure in the revitalization of Cajun music in the United State faith not bad so joining Michael today in the quartet our Fiddler Mitch read a master musician and instructor who's performed with all of the great names in Cajun music since he was a teenager Michael's brother David do say a soulful singer and an exceptional guitarist who is create who's credited with making the acoustic guitar more central to modern Cajun music and Billy where a versatile percussionist equally at home playing traditional rhythms on the Cajun triangle or throwing a little Latin inflected groove into the two-step so together these musicians have performed all over the globe they've represented Cajun music in popular media like HBO's Treme and NPR's Prairie Home Companion and now today here in the Library of Congress and the Coolidge auditorium so please join me in welcoming the Beausoleil quartet [Applause] [Music] Wow Thank You y'all sure you in the right place we have to check well all right it's really great to be here thanks for finding this place and for coming and hope you have a good time we intend to so that's probably one of the early songs we started playing get different names recently called Acadian two-step and usually was an instrumental but kind of wordy gonna put some words to it anyway so somebody told us that you're welcome to dance [Music] good luck all right [Music] mmmm [Music] Oh calling where [Music] - [Music] we [Music] thank you [Music] you just got to play a couple of songs to get warmed up here this was called as for all you sharp people is called Shabbat set which means little shorty and you know in the old days well you know most Frenchman and Cajuns are short that's okay but if you live in an old Cajun house you're always hitting your head this was about a little girl little girl Shabazz [Music] [Applause] [Music] and I said I'm there [Music] Hey and butts all day [Music] are you okay mmm you [Music] want to Oh Oh haha one bad and [Music] you my bad you [Music] [Applause] well what we call French music or Cajun music mm-hmm is way diversified not just two steps in waltzes they're reels and we were lucky enough to we have the age to go to here and actually learn from great musicians such as Dennis McGee was born in the 1890s and he recorded with the first wave of French musicians from Southwest Louisiana back in 1928 and 29 till a13 and so this is a real we just call it a real Cajun [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] mmm [Music] Oh No they [Music] you [Music] [Applause] Oh [Music] [Applause] there you go all right let's do it you played this one yes and you like this and it's called lace on the bottom Lane let the good times roll even though the mosquitoes are biting [Music] good later be now [Applause] huh [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] no man with a BA or experimentation you [Music] you [Applause] Bon Appetite eBay was like those to knock out a mom on a bad day is almost up literally live by somebody really kept my busy Jimmer I was a member jll God to get it off right [Applause] thank you so much yeah our music is old I mean the Acadians where they call themselves Acadians once they got here there were French people who wanted to get out of France bad year for cheese and losing your head and so they moved to the new world in 1604 which which is which is now Nova Scotia New Brunswick and parts of Maine all of Maine north of the Kennebec River and they lived there pretty peacefully democratically first sort of democratic society never really had a head they were they wanted to be neutrals but of course the English never saw any French is neutral and and so unfortunately they wanted their land around the Bay of Fundy because they had recovered some of their the landed washes out and they made dams and dikes for it was a very fertile place and so anyway so the English wanted their land and they deported 12,000 Acadians and it wasn't a pretty scene families were separated and everything and about 1200 like a 10% of that made it to Louisiana in different ways both sides of our family actually went back to France a little island called beli lomell and they didn't like it very much and so actually the rewarded Spanish land grant to come back to Louisiana and so we're very influenced by the music of different parts of Louisiana especially New Orleans which is important this is a song it was probably am a vegetable kind of song if it lays on yon we guy was trying to sell onions and a hot cake and it's always do blah entendre and so there you go we call Leon yo [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] la la la la do you [Music] [Applause] his own young years ano live on your YouTube of March 17 the Lissa micrometer knee looked oh I'm a boo-boo crochet with a bubble dead [Music] love to show [Music] I will call a truce [Music] well I don't know if y'all watched the news last week but they made a whole lot of news about nothing it was just rained and you know and we were used to hurricanes knock on wood and that we had had in bad wind since 2005 but um at a friend of ours glynn peid he's a filmmaker Cajun filmmaker and he called me up years ago and to do this festival because this island in Louisiana healed kominato got wiped out in his hurricane that happened at the end of September and it was a beautiful date as a gorgeous blue day Chris day and at night it turns and is horrible what we call now you know a level 5 hurricane hit and it had washed a lot of houses back and then when the waves came back they washed them out into the Gulf one guy's house and they would they had to do to cut out the floors and one guy did that in this house ended up two and a half miles upriver by a little town called cut-offs Louisiana anybody been there well their house is still there he bought the land he said man going back and so this is so I said doesn't have a hurricane song so you know we experienced a lot of hurricanes and this is sort of my version of what it's like to be inside of a hurricane heaven forbid you ever have that experience because you know when it passes over like the eye comes over it's like sunshine oh it's over [Music] you [Music] me [Music] yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] this Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] come [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Applause] that's devudu death devudu this winter river wall skull of all screaming l most of songs we have criminal in them which means criminal are not about criminals they're about women and if the women sing the songs they're about men love [Music] [Laughter] [Music] in their board for their sake bottle of water done [Applause] I'm gonna get a pistol and if I walk with you buddy every day [Music] [Applause] [Music] No No [Music] good [Music] goodbye [Music] you Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] god no boy every day you ever come and microfarad if ye [Music] yeah [Music] [Laughter] [Music] lemon balm got Dido we are never happy when I heard of him or properity fashi [Music] another [Music] [Laughter] [Music] yeah [Music] never [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you well one of our heroes Gabbar never met his name of them I'm a day Arda where the Creoles when the first squeals to record back to Louisiana in late 1928-29 all the way to 1936 he also played with Dennis Wiggy fella we told you about and but Amadei died and unknown grave 1941 same place that Buddy Bolden died in 20 years early kind of weird but anyway but this is a song he wrote it's called a Volta Opelousas up looses waltz [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] day [Music] [Applause] [Applause] member Oh [Music] what [Music] [Music] come on Crocker believe a fan Oh [Music] I [Music] [Applause] [Music] good there all right well back in 1982 when we played the Smithsonian Folklife Festival Dewey baltha was there that year and he showed us this song that was not quite finished but he finished it it's called kanji tape off when I was born [Music] member [Music] d Kappa God should be more emotional asha to build potassium hello today could be the large animal [Music] Oh [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] they don't just appear dig about because the city for a male through one debate today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right catch my breath these people go back to work the tune I wrote about a called Carencro name of a little town in southwest was he added the story the love Stewart kind of a triangle kind of thing and it was picking in Civil War whatever and uh but anyway these cute couple in love right so the fiend he bought a boat cheer what about sure he goes off to war and this little rascal comes back couple weeks later in tells well had Josephine's that one of what your had died so she's all distress and everything like that any bother so finally they get married well three days after they get married guess who shows up bond one tear so they're they're dancing their last walls together you know and then out of the shadows comes to a dagger meant for a buona volunteer and as they turned as you're doing the wall says watch out it's deaths Josephine in the back and she dies I love it yeah all my French friend says that's murder I said yes usually right about good times Montag really I said yes what we kill people too for a lot people done you who knows if he will identify you will SP a letter to the bone haven't you if we let off a same with a not a honey bee larva lil occurred Azusa V sorry bro give me Mom your buddy [Applause] [Music] you and [Music] you [Music] love is ODP whoo kettle brew look at all bro my belly ball a true together Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] man [Music] don't feel there let's do well we sure appreciate y'all coming out as a pleasure playing and got one more away yeah at least [Applause] okay this is everybody love not too many huh the song I wrote years ago called lover folly in which is I don't know you know it starts out he says yes she says no he wants the wall she wants to two-step he's hungry she's not hungry so finally she said when why did you marry me say presently because and he says well you know he says the 20 and kept mewling which is a nice French expression to bring back Poitier and tete Neely which means you have a head like a mule and she replies okay way mister to talk to my mother yeah yeah but it's you that married me [Music] but when your way we may know this quad society and been you James this is walking for money turn a golden to bill as well Lander you're pathetic Wow remember no no problem baby Oh [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] by remember [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] bad Papaji triple-dip diversity becomes a PRT edit a baby didn't work little your fellows well you ever follow mr. bottom tombliboos baby [Music] [Music] whoa [Music] [Applause] day-day [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is so much David you say Billy where Mitchell lead thank you both collectors have thank you so much for coming we really really appreciate you coming out and supporting these fabulous musician they are also going to be down at the mall and just to let you know we have some more musicians national heritage winners who are going to be here Friday we have two wonderful taiko drum performers who are going to be in discussion with Dan Sheehy in wid all at 12:00 talking about the taiko drum tradition and next Wednesday led words katanas slack key guitar player from Hawaii will be here in Coolidge at noon so please come to both of those and we will see you soon again Thanks this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 244,331

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Id: Ydw7hK0e4lo

Length: 73min 46sec (4426 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2017