Music
Don Vappie, Banjo a la Creole (Vappielle Music Productions)
Don Vappie recently attended a conference that focused on the banjo’s journey from Africa to the western world and its role in American music. At that summit, he jammed with […]
Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders, Swing Out (Vappielle Music Productions)
Swing Out from Vappie’s Creole Jazz Serenaders is an exuberant affair of traditional jazz loaded with sudden stops, quick changes, snappy high-hat cymbal snappings, clucking banjos and sailing trumpet, clarinet […]
Hadley J. Castille, Refait (Swallow)
Ever since his epiphany during a tour of Canada in the early ’80s, Hadley Castille has represented a rare side of Cajun music history. While most practitioners follow the typical […]
Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws, A Step Ahead (Bridge Entertainment)
When Step Rideau stepped out in Houston’s zydeco kingdom in the ’90s, he did so in a big way. Capacity crowds wrapped around the block just waiting to squeeze into […]
Gayla, Gumbo Rodeo (Independent)
South Louisiana musical fusions seem endless. Wayne Toups amalgamated the frontal attack of Cajun music with the backbeats of zydeco to birth zydecajun; Horace Trahan dropped out of zydeco only […]
Chris Miller and Bayou Roots, Bayou Roots (Bayou Roots)
It’s fashionable these days to proclaim oneself as a roots musician, especially when it comes to hunting down big money gigs. When Chris Miller, former lynchpin of Louisiana’s Kingfish, says […]
Lucky Playboys, More Luck Than Sense (Ossun Music)
Cajun-Creole hipshakers Filé ended their prodigious 20-year run with a bang with a much-ballyhooed New Year’s Eve gig in 2002. While accordionist Ward Lormand and fiddler D’Jalma Garnier could’ve slipped […]
Jason Frey & Al Berard, Old Style Cajun Music (Old Man Records)
Two of Cajun music’s most understated heavyweights find out that they’re long, lost soulmates when Al Berard (fiddle, guitar) teams up with Jason Frey (accordion, fiddle). Though Frey is […]
Neti Vaan, Toonzville (Jumping Man Records)
It’s hard to imagine a genre that fiddler Neti Vaan hasn’t tackled by now with her border-hopping eclecticism and folkloric sensibility of culling tunes from around the globe. But should […]
Ray Abshire, Arrete Pas La Musique (Swallow Records)
Country honker George Jones coined it; Dewey Balfa practically transformed Jones’ “Don’t Stop the Music” hit title, translated as “Arrête Pas La Musique,” into a cultural mission statement of its […]
