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Artist:
Feufollet
Title: Cow Hope Island
Label: Valcour
Records
The Next Generation of Cajun Cool: Surreal Snapshots of Feufollet's New
Louisiana Traditions
I“What's up, Cajuns?” ask the youthful innovators of Louisiana's
Feufollet. The playful salutation went from inside joke to habit for the
band members whose love of roots music began in the cradle. Their latest
album, Cow Island Hop (Valcour Records; July 1, 2008), brings Mellotron
to melancholy ballads, funky horns to time-tested fiddle tunes, and a
cool new energy to Cajun music.
A lot of feeling lies behind this little joke: the irony of singing French
songs in an Anglophone land, of young hip players devoted to old traditions,
of iPod age eclectics dedicated to a very localized ethnic culture. Emerging
from a generation newly engaged with their once threatened Francophone
heritage, Feufollet has Cajun music in their blood. The mostly 20-somethings
grew up speaking French, bopping at Cajun jam sessions as toddlers, taking
music lessons from older musicians who put Cajun music on the map, and
later touring the U.S. as precocious young performers. “A lot of
people today are more self consciously Cajun, but in a good way,”
Feufollet accordionist and fiddler Chris Stafford explains. “Our
group and our generation are really discovering who we are and where we
came from.”
This discovery started early. Feufollet's fiddler, Chris Segura, remembers
his family driving back home to Cajun country, just to catch some good
music: “Starting around the time I was three, we would drive almost
every weekend to Eunice, a good two hours. We'd go to the jam sessions
at legendary Cajun musician Mark Savoy's record store. Or we'd go to the
Liberty Theater and watch a show.” Soon Segura was playing old tunes
on a tiny fiddle of his own, learning from master musicians like Steve
Riley.
Younger Cajuns like the musicians in Feufollet form a kind of sandwich
generation, learning French and trying, along with their grandparents,
to promote the language at the heart of their heritage. “The language
is what's most up in the air at this point. It's up to our generation
to keep it intact,” Stafford muses. “There was a gap in the
mid 1940s when parents didn't teach their kids French, and so a lot of
the 50-year-olds don't speak it. Really old and really young people are
the ones now making a conscious effort.”
As a part of this passion for local traditional culture, Feufollet find
themselves at the center of a vibrant scene in and around Lafayette, forging
new traditions of their own. The crowds filling downtown Lafayette clubs
to catch roots music have unexpectedly grown more youthful in recent years.
Energetic twenty-somethings cram into Feufollet shows and dance a foot
from the stage. “People sometimes even fall onto the stage while
dancing, right in your face, but it's cool,” Stafford chuckles.
Yet while Feufollet serenades college students and cultural hipsters,
the band also bounces ideas off of veteran musicians like Steve Riley,
who give advice along with lessons and who support Feufollet's playful
innovation on traditional themes. Though the band was excited about their
experiments on Cow Island Hop, they weren't quite sure what more traditionalist
listeners might think. “We were a bit worried about that at first,”
Segura laughs, “but then the reaction was really positive. People
thought it was good, even though it was different, because it was respectful,”
not to mention performed with painstaking musicianship.
The quirky characters and unbridled energy encountered in the current
Cajun scene are behind the album's curious name. The band was playing
a gig near Cow Island, a tiny hamlet south of Lafayette with little more
than a bar and a few houses. The evening soon turned surreal, thanks in
part to a local drummer named Wooley, whose past included stints as a
'70s roadie. Wooley got up on stage, demanding to play a song or two,
and before they knew it, Feufollet was rocking out Black Sabbath and Led
Zeppelin covers. Wooley ended the evening by posing for an innocent peck-on-the-cheek
snapshot and at the last minute giving singer Anna Laura Edmiston a big,
sloppy (and uninvited) kiss. The wild night spawned not only endless jokes
and an original instrumental by Feufollet's electric guitarist Josh Caffery,
but the album's name and eerie cover art.
When not rocking the dance floor, Feufollet digs up forgotten gems from
the under-explored Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, where Chris
Segura works, including the little-known song, “Femme l'a dit.”
“There is a wealth of information there,” Stafford explains.
“A lot of the material hasn't been gone through all that much, other
than by the people cataloging it.” These newfound treasures get reworked
with new instrumentation or subtle shifts in timbre.
Feufollet also crafts original arrangements and songs based on the sounds
they know and love, Cajun and non-Cajun. Traditional tunes morph as Feufollet
plays around with them, transforming spare a cappella songs or double
fiddle pieces into raucous dance numbers or spooky ballads. “It's
perfectly acceptable to incorporate different styles into the music, just
like bands did with swing or country in the 1940s and 1950s,” Stafford
notes. “People shouldn't be afraid to bring new things to the table,”
whether it's a rollicking drum beat, a tuba line, or a keyboard track
harkening back to '70s rock.
For “Chère Bébé Créole,” a double-fiddle
favorite of Segura's made popular by Cajun fiddle legend Denis McGee,
Feufollet began by laying down a more traditional version with two fiddles
and vocals. But in the process of working in the studio with young Lafayette
engineer Ivan Klisanin, the band expanded the arrangement to include surprising
elements like a backward vocal track and even a Mellotron, in a subtle
shout-out to the Beatles.
“Sur la Bord de l'eau,” an old Cajun ballad also sung in various
forms across the Francophone world, was transformed from a short set of
verses into an epic (by Cajun standards) six-minute song featuring instruments
from cello to lap steel guitar. To tell this tale of a young woman seduced
by a sailor's beautiful song, Feufollet collected as many verses as they
could from various versions they knew, trying to convey the story their
favorite vintage recordings didn't always get around to telling.
For Feufollet, Cajun music is not only about speaking French or playing
fiddle or accordion just so. It's about an awareness of the past and future
of a unique cultural community and those who formed it. “Not to sound
clichéd, but being Cajun, I'd say, means respecting your ancestors
and not forgetting the people who were here before us, who did so much
work getting Cajun music beyond this little local thing that nobody knew
about,” Segura reflects. “It's also about moving the music forward
for those who are going to come after us.”
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Artist: Mariza
Title: Terra
Label: 4Q/World
Connection
A
Genre Reborn and a Singer Transformed:
A New Mariza Brings a Smile to the World
Charlie Chaplin's “Smile” was never supposed to end
up on the latest album by Portugal's musical grande dame. Mariza, a
fado powerhouse, and Brazilian pianist Ivan Lins were just clowning
around, having some fun with the sweet song that's been covered by everybody
from Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross to Judy Garland and even Michael
Jackson. That is, until they realized producer Javier Limón had
been secretly recording them. When she looked up and saw tears in his
eyes, she wondered what she had done. “I thought we broke something,
I thought we did something wrong!” she exclaims. Sung with the
kind of beautiful melancholy that only a fadista can bring, it instead
ends up as a bonus track on the North American release of Terra (4Q
/ World Connection), a musical proclamation that Mariza has come into
her own. Terra will be released Stateside on January 27, 2009, to coincide
with an extensive three-month 47 city tour of North America.
Mariza calls “Smile” a gift, a “present for the kindness
people have given to me through all this time, trying to understand
me. It's my way of saying 'Thank you'.” And audiences have certainly
enjoyed watching her transform. If her debut album Fado em Mim was an
effort to establish her knowledge of the fado tradition, having grown
up in her father's fado house in Lisbon, her second release Fado Curvo
allowed her to put her own stamp on the tradition while demonstrating
that there are more ways than one to move artistically from point A
to point B. Her next release, Transparente, a more intimate, classically-inspired
take on fado, expressed Mariza as a more experienced and sophisticated
artist.
Since then Mariza has continued to wow audiences with her powerful talent
as a live performer, recording the album Concerto Em Lisboa to a hometown
audience of several thousand right next to that most visual icon of
fado-the sea. She has also traveled the world, selling out concert halls,
from Carnegie Hall and Disney Concert Hall to London's Royal Albert
Hall and the Sydney Opera House, and winning awards, including a BBC
World Music Award and 2008 Latin Grammy nomination.
Now a mature performer, Mariza's Terra showcases the new voice of Portugal,
a voice comfortable enough with Portuguese music to have some fun with
it. On the one hand, Terra is firmly planted in tradition; tracks like
“Já Me Deixou” and “Rosa Branca” rejuvenate
well-worn, beloved songs of the past, and “Recurso” demonstrates
her lifelong commitment to fado, having discovered this hand-written,
never-published poem by David Mourão-Ferreira in a fado museum.
On the other hand, nourished by her traditional roots, Mariza branches
out in new directions. The first clue of this was her choice of Javier
Limón, a Grammy-nominated Spanish flamenco guitarist/producer
(known for his work with Paco de Lucia, Bebo & Cigala, and Buika),
as producer for Terra. At first leery of having somebody with such a
different musical background working with her on her new album, Mariza
invited him to Portugal to play in a taverna. It was then that it hit
her: “Right then I knew he was the right one for this. With him,
everything was music, for music.”
Collaboration with other musicians yielded musical fruits on the tracks
of Terra as well. “Fronteira,” a lively song discussing the
real and imagined borders between Portugal and Spain, features a folkloric
Portuguese rhythm from the north that is made to sound gently Cuban
through the playing of Chucho Valdes, the Cuban pianist and bandleader
more known for his jazz stylings, and with a battery of Portuguese percussion
played by Spanish master El Piraña. “Alma de Vento”
was created in the highly unconventional manner of having a guitar line
first sent to her by Dominic Miller, an Argentinian-born, London-raised
musician who now plays with Sting, around which she had to find the
right lyrics.
Perhaps the most memorable musical melding on the album happens in the
morna “Beijo de Saudade.” The poem was written in misery in
1958 by one of the greatest Cape Verdean poets, B.leza, who had married
a fado star, moved to Portugal, and found himself dying in a hospital
bed where he saw the sea-and his tiny, faraway home island-through the
window.
Joining her on the track is Tito Paris, a Cape Verdean icon, living
in Lisbon who has worked before with Mariza and Cesaria Evora, among
others, and who blends African influences into the Portuguese musical
landscape. Half Mozambican herself, Mariza finds the collaboration on
Terra deeply personal as well, saying that “Tito is putting the
African part that is missing in me, and I'm putting the Portuguese part
that is missing in him.” Along with an elegant muted trumpet, the
track is loaded with enough fado-worthy longing to create a timeless
masterpiece.
Iberian splendor is captured in the track “Pequenas Verdades,”
a sweet tune written for Mariza by Limón himself. Wanting to
retain the original Spanish flavor, they brought in Concha Buika-known
simply as Buika-a meteorically rising Afro-Spanish flamenco singer.
It's easy to put a star like Mariza into a musical box. Fado, the beguiling
music that helped catapult her onto the global soundscape also taunts
her like a jealous lover never wanting to be neglected for too long,
a curious and passionate relationship she recounts on the track “Mihn'Alma.”
Yet the transformed Mariza firmly stands her ground. With a new musical
family surrounding her and the voice of experience and tradition behind
her, she reaches out to give Portugal a new sound.
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Artist: Julie Fowlis
Title: Cuilidh
Label: Shoeshine Records/Cadiz Music
A Treasure Trove at the Edge of the World: Julie Fowlis Brings
the Priceless Gaelic Songs of Scotland's Hebrides Islands into the Mainstream
on Cuilidh
New Box Set Includes Gaelic Cover of The Beatles' "Blackbird"
When young Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis found a fragment of a beautiful
song from North Uist in an Edinburgh archive, she was stumped. So she
returned to her remote island home in the Outer Hebrides to see if anyone
there knew the rest: “The fragment started on the second line.
But it's that key first line that triggers everyone's memory,”
Fowlis explains, “so nobody could remember.”
She turned to her neighbor Hugh Matheson, a reserved but warm and gentlemanly
local expert known for his mastery of the island's wealth of songs and
tales. Suffering from a lung ailment, Hugh couldn't get out more than
a few lines for Fowlis' tape recorder. They chatted for a while afterward,
and when Julie had packed her equipment and was halfway out the door,
Hugh suddenly burst into verse after verse. “That was the only
time he sang me the whole song,” Fowlis smiles, and she learned
it on the spot.
By cultivating ancient roots and an overlooked language, Julie Fowlis
has moved Gaelic song from the edge of the world (her home island North
Uist is one of the westernmost points in Europe) to center stage. Her
latest album, Cuilidh, (Shoeshine Records/Cadiz Music)-which means “treasury”
or “secret hiding place” in Gaelic-is a trove of everything
from lighthearted mouth music to serious ballads chronicling life and
loss on the rugged island and its rough seas. And now Cadiz releases
a special edition box set of Cuilidh, which includes a bonus CD of Fowlis'
Gaelic cover of The Beatles' "Blackbird," five live tracks
from the highly respected Celtic Connections festival, and a DVD documentary
with live footage and interviews. This repertoire will be featured in
her new North American tour February-April 2009.
Fowlis' delicate, heartfelt renditions have moved major British celebrities,
from Radiohead drummer Phil Selway to British comedian Ricky Gervais,
and won Fowlis a spate of important U.K. music awards. Her album appeals
to audiences across the musical spectrum. Her label, Shoeshine, is run
by Francis Macdonald from Teenage Fanclub, well-loved by indie/Nirvana
generation music fans.
Growing up, Fowlis was surrounded by song and traditional music, and
even at her tiny local school with only twelve students, music was a
vital part of the curriculum: “We had only one teacher but were
lucky to have a tutor visit for lessons on the pipes,” Fowlis remembers.
“Also, we would learn a little Gaelic song or a wee poem or wee
rhyme,” which youngsters were expected to perform for adults at
community gatherings.
At these events or at home, friends and family members told the stories
and sang the songs that recounted shipwrecks, past scandals, and great-great-grandmothers'
affairs of the heart. This song lineage is a key part of Gaelic traditional
life: “People know your exact genealogy. If you translate from
Gaelic into English, the question 'Where are you from?' changes to 'Who
are you from?' You get that feeling from the songs. If you know somebody's
full name, you know exactly who their ancestors were. We can date our
family to 1500 and before, just from that oral tradition.”
North Uist is one of the few places in Scotland where this age-old song
line has not been broken and where the majority of people still speak
Gaelic as a first language. Long denigrated by Scotland's overlords
and neglected by modern cultural authorities,
Scottish
Gaelic was not recognized as an official language in Scotland until
2005, several years after the region gained an autonomous parliament.
As late as the 1950s and 1960s, children were forbidden to use the language
at school. Only one percent of the population can speak the language
of the vast store of songs tucked away by past generations in the voices
and memories of their descendants. Songs often sway with the rhythm
of daily life, rowing, hay making, butter churning, or walking, the
arduous final stage in making the world renowned much sought-after Harris
Tweed.
“Looking back, these people had a really hard life. They were on
the edge of the world, and the weather was extreme, the conditions were
hard. Through music and song, they were very expressive people, though
they were rarely formally educated,” Fowlis muses. “They were
always singing and writing poetry. It could be something light hearted,
talking about the food on the table or the cow outside, or something
that washed up on beach. Or it could be something completely beautiful.”
Many of these songs are so enmeshed with the sound and rhythm of the
Gaelic language that faithful translation is out of the question. “Don't
get the wrong impression about us,” Fowlis laughs. Cryptic-sounding
songs like “Celebrate the Great Bonnet!” are examples of mouth
music, coherent yet nonsensical tongue-twisting lyrics woven from alliteration
and linguistic flourishes to seamlessly match a dance tune. This centuries-old
tradition flourished after the 18th-century prohibition of Scottish
instruments, tartans, language, and other vital aspects of traditional
culture, when people needed something to dance to. Other mouth music
songs on Cuilidh (pronounced KOOL-ee ) give silly, earthy snapshots
of everything from feisty geezers and potatoes to manure piles.
Yet perhaps the richest vein of song Fowlis draws on is the ballads
recounting major events in her small community, heart-wrenching tragedies
and gossip-worthy scandals. “Some of these songs are ten years
old, and some are five hundred,” she notes. They tell the tale
of an uprising of World War I veterans cheated out of their promised
land, of headstrong young women refusing to marry anyone but their true
love, of high-born beauties fleeing their lavish weddings. This last
event, the shocking elopement of Jesse of Balranald with a man from
a nearby island, inspired so many songs that “I had to whittle
it down to two from seven or eight,” Fowlis giggles. “I couldn't
do a whole album of songs about Jesse.”
And in a fascinating twist of fate, these stories, sung in a language
spoken by only 60,000 people, have captured the imagination of British
listeners, including various stars and indie rockers. After Fowlis began
winning a streak of UK awards for best folk singer and most promising
emerging artist several years ago, she caught the ears of a rapidly
growing number of mainstream music fans, something unprecedented for
a Scottish Gaelic singer. Most attribute it to her voice, the pure,
precise, lilting tone that reflects Fowlis' passion for the songs and
conveys absolute confidence born of living with these songs for a lifetime.
Hailed as the first Gaelic crossover artist, Fowlis exhibits this confidence
most brightly when she cheerfully brushes aside suggestions she sing
in English or change her approach to making music. “It's a glass-half-empty
or half-full situation, and it is difficult to know whether the language
barrier is a positive or negative thing. I've always seen it as a positive
thing, though it does seem to be becoming a big deal for everyone but
me,” Fowlis told Glasgow's The Herald in a recent interview. “I'm
more than happy to sing in English…but Gaelic is what I know and
what I love.”
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