Vishtèn: Acadian Music from Prince Edward Island

to tell you a little bit more about the music that you're going to hear today and and to tell you a little bit more about vish ten I want to bring out Steve Wynn it are a writer editor extraordinaire here at the Folklife Center to tell you a little bit more about them so welcome [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello as Betsey said my name is Steve Winnick and I'm the editor and writer here in the Folklife Center and a folklorist and francophone Canadian Music has been one of my interests for a long time and I actually first saw vish 10 the group that we're gonna see probably between 10 and 15 years ago up in Prince Edward Island which is where some of them are from so I especially appreciate the great team from the Canadian Embassy who worked so hard with us to make this concert happen and my colleagues Thea Austin Nancy Gross jon-fen John Gould and the whole programming team at the American Folklife Center and the band members in vish 10 I'll tell you a little bit about the group each contribute you know something really special to the group pastel de bois is from Munk out mell in Prince Edward Island and she plays piano and accordion and she's a great percussive dancer as well and she really combines those traditions so she has those disciplines influenced each other and she's a great percussive player her sister emanuelle Leblanc as you'll see plays many instruments she sings and she dances and they were raised in an Acadian community which is what most of the French speakers in the Maritime Provinces are called an Acadian music like the music of neighboring Quebec combines French and Celtic music and that's what you're likely to hear if you're a fan of Celtic music maybe Katie and has a little more Scottish and come back a little more Irish but those are fighting words people can fight over those up there in Canada and but but something you should know also is that Acadian music is one of the main roots of Cajun culture and there's been a lot of crossover between the Acadians and the Cajuns lately that is they've been visiting each other's communities and learning each other's music and so you'll hear some Cajun music and Cajun influence as well the third band member is Pascal Muse who comes from the evil Amon N or the magdalen islands and that has an interesting history of being an Acadian settlement originally but part of Quebec since the 18th century and so they draw on both of the tap roots of french-canadian culture in eastern Canada and Pascal grew up playing the fiddle and guitar in the local style but like the other band members he really went beyond that so you'll hear influences from Celtic to folk to jazz to rock music in there playing and of course one of the things we love here at the Library of Congress is people who go digging into archives to find their material and that's definitely true of this group they have looked into archives all over Canada for traditional material and then they've also composed their own material to go with that sometimes setting songs to new tunes sometimes writing parts of tunes and sometimes composing their own music from scratch one of the things that we're proud of actually is that some of their Cajun songs that they performed come straight out of our archive here at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress they've worked with our Lomax recordings and other recordings of Cajun music so so we we love the fact that they're playing some of our music as well so vish 10 has won many awards from music Pei the East Coast Music Association the Canadian Folk Music Awards and this past year were nominated for a Juno Award and I'm sure you're going to love their high-energy take on french-canadian Celtic and Cajun songs and we ask that you give a warm welcome to fish ten [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Thank You mr. Magoo come on Sava happy yeah no mercy service per Mia we are really happy to be here today it's an honor for us to represent the left honk opening this week and and our little tour in the States here in Washington so thank you so much for having us here it's gonna be great so we're gonna keep going on with a song it's old song really old and that sound talk about a woman she's really as well old very old really tall really big and strong and she's really not happy so we go with a top eight [Music] oh my spelling it shooting [Music] god [Music] see see Hey [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] look at son [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] only back on toddler more a moussaka sellin V and let's plan said watch a Lafayette province to Canada en de la region Evangeline la pluie Quran regional cuisine so lil yeah / Chris Santos and francophone from yellow and so little acid wha so I was just saying my sister and I pass dollar from Prince Edward Island from the largest Acadian community there is six Acadian communities on the island only about 5% of the province has French as their first language but were from that one of those areas Pascal VN desde la madeleine capital one safest elbow servants is Justin Trudeau see the Sanka House effect spell facile Pascal is from the nearby magdalen islands with an easy 5 hour ferry ride to get to where he's from it's just next door present la musica de la cadena de la musique Renetta so suddenly receive sanoviv Irma pleasure de Beauvoir release OCD va pas le Romney and at manana OCD Danube composition Provo Georgie LaDonna PS con as we see see the nouvelle composition so we're playing a mix of traditional Acadian music for you today we love going into the archives and grabbing some old stuff and trying to make it new we're also playing some of our own tunes so it's kind of a mix of both and what we just played for you is actually a set of tunes that we call co-op use all which means three blizzards and we dedicated to the winter of 2015 where we got 18 feet of snow in PEI it was amazing just lovely and please come visit us but in the summer and it's not like that all the time P I tourism is going to hate us now it's lovely so we're actually gonna sing an old Cajun song for you now I'll let passes I'll explain it's a bit for you this is a song that we learned from a good friend of ours and she was doing a project on an Acadian and Cajun songs and she presented us this song and it was kind of it wasn't a very old French so she had to look up a few of the words that weren't necessarily used anymore but it's essentially the story of this man who loves three things in life he loves dancing he loves women and he loves whisky perfect yeah he was probably Irish or something he's a good man yes and he has a girlfriend in this song she gets lost in the woods and he's got this little bell and he's trying to find her so we need your help would you guys like to sing with us all francais yes it's really easy it goes like this ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding [Music] Toby lap yeah ding anything to beat up yeah yes yeah that sounds great great accent very nice yeah here we go [Music] ding-ding-ding-ding ding-ding-ding-ding to be anything [Applause] holy Tycho ggb can only cut a fountain Oh Gigi weekend only got a hotel except the yellow television these feel dumb a demigod and some toffee such a delicate until vote [Music] the peanut telling it Digga Digga ting ting to beat to be again [Music] tease me yeah whiskey [Music] Oh to be [Music] teacher today [Music] song:ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding to be lab can be anything to be yeah [Music] ding-ding-ding yeah [Music] that was really great thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] bbbbbb busting of your mother baby but no no baby buckaroo [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] see [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so we're gonna play a slower piece for you now this is a piece that I composed a few years ago and I wasn't sure what I was going to name it but kind of sounded to me like like the ocean and it does influence us quite a bit growing up on Islands I started thinking about my grandfather and how he used to fish lobster he fished lobster a good part of his life and he loved traditional music he would play fiddle and accordion and harmonica and he loves step dancing and set dancing on Saturday nights and when we were growing up we would spend afternoons with him and he would tell us all kinds of stories he had 12 children of his own so a huge family and eventually a lot of grandchildren so he became quite a good storyteller and he would tell us about his adventures on the sea and sometimes how he would get caught in these big storms and you know talking back with our cousin's our favorite stories from him were his stories about mermaids because he always told us that they were kind of there for him to protect him and would always bring him home safely and so I thought it was perfect for this melody so I call it the siren of Emile [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] they're super fit [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Applause] I need us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm not a Manabu son me see [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you so we just released in Canada anyways our sixth album he'll be available here soon in the States although we have some today but it's we decided to name it horizon Zoey's own and I think mainly because we are from islands and the communities where we grew up and we learned all our music is by the water or you know Islanders so it's just really part of our life to create and learn with with the the ocean right in front of us I know my dad's Party's annual parties were always by the water he still has them you know quite often but growing up people would just come to the house and play tunes if he met someone you know that came from wherever Nova Scotia Quebec the states he met them he's a very social person do you play a tune no that's okay come on over and have a tea and then all of a sudden there'd be a bunch of people in the house these house parties normally start at 9 o'clock at night and finish at 9 in the morning and our bedrooms are right on top of this kitchen and one night I sneak down to look and see what was going on and started counting how many Fiddler's there were because the fiddle is the main instrument in Acadia and I was yea counting and I counted 17 and that's when I decided I was going to play the whistle a true enough of them so anyways we'll play the title track off of this album [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well it can be a challenge to find a really positive folk song have you guys ever noticed that it's the same for Acadian music there's so many great beautiful melodies and everything and some really great songs and for this album we really wanted to find a few that were really had a really good message and everything and so we searched and we have this these archives at the Moncton University and they are also in books called Li Shan so went ahead Z and when I read the texts the first time I was like this is this is actually pretty nice it is the story of this woman who gets her heart broken but in the chorus she says that instead of dwelling on everything that went bad and the fact that they're not together she was going to live in the present moment and remember all of the beautiful flowery moments that they had and so we thought that'll do we'll take it [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you see baby [Music] Jamaica disappear [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you so much how are you now guys have fun having a good time good we're gonna play a last sound for you guys but before that I have a joke for you guys you guys love joke when it's good so I'm gonna try my best and that joke it's a real joke that really happened on my island on my green islands maybe 25 years ago and that joke it's talk about tourism so I'm I need tourists and the hall today quite a few so it's a joke about us all right unlike lanai lands the biggest economy there it's fishing and tourism sometimes during the summer time the population triple its really it's good for everybody you know I have a lot of family work for tourism in France and sometimes can be a little bit overwhelming but we really love tourists okay so no offense for the tourists so that joke alright so that couple came on the island maybe yes 25 years ago they walk around for a couple of weeks and the last day they decide to just take a walk and visit Wharf around the island so the last Wharf they walk around they see an old fisherman there it just was working on his net really relaxed you know because on my island we always said we don't have clock but we have time I love it alright so after that so the the guy of the the couple asked the old fisherman he asked him hey mister I have a question for you so the old fisherman take his time he puts its fishing neck down and you look at him yes what's up so he asked him it's really beautiful here it's really nice it's really nice but people live here hey so the old fisherman just tell him yes you know what it's true but at the end of September they all gone Thank You Came come on Galen we love tourists Mimi done that much that couple but we love tourists all right so this that song it's a Cajun song it's old song and we put a tune in that song from home so now we caught it it's a Cajun Acadian Celtic song it's interesting and you guys sing already well at first so we need you guys sing along with us again you want to sing again with us alright we're gonna practice that before and at the end of the song I'm gonna ask you to sing along with us as well so here we go oh yeah surely come [Music] come on squirrel much for fire that's really good sometimes it's you know it's good what do sir baby prepare son for me me you guys Sean Graham IBM really well singing alright so we're gonna try that again with me just a little bit more conviction okay and more rhythm more guts there we go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what do sir [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what do [Music] [Music] [Applause] you got some [Music] Thank You Mel C Alamosa can attend ECI Washington Mencia Denise we know Chaka Marcia it is personal ethical and referring to Tony C so thank you to the Canadian embassy here in Washington the least we know who started this whole conversation about us coming down to play for you guys and also to everybody here at the Library of Congress anybody who was involved in organizing this big round of applause for those lovely people [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are we do have one more gig here today not particularly here but at the Kennedy Center from 6:00 to 7:00 tonight so if you'd like to come see us or if you know anybody that would like to come and check it out please let them know we have here Pesce moose [Music] [Applause] this is pastel Leblanc [Applause] [Music] this is a manual now and we also have some merch some CD vinyl hat if you wanna have something from us we just came around here after the show thank you so much and thank you as well our fourth member of her band our sound engineer mr. baby savoir the back [Applause] so take care of yourself we have a great time so all to see you soon bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 25,012

Rating: 4.8174272 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: 9Dzmrp_Dy1Q

Length: 64min 11sec (3851 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2019