This first volume in a series of nine is an ass-kicker. The series is supposed to be a multi-tiered effort in illustrating Louisiana's rich folk music traditions that not only survive, but thrive. While offering listeners all the "hits" in both Cajun and zydeco, it also proposes to offer many obscure field recordings and buried tracks from decades past. Volume one is titled after the Balfa Brothers' first jukebox hit -- ultimately known as the "popularists" of Cajun music and its longest running practitioners, Dewey Balfa ...
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This first volume in a series of nine is an ass-kicker. The series is supposed to be a multi-tiered effort in illustrating Louisiana's rich folk music traditions that not only survive, but thrive. While offering listeners all the "hits" in both Cajun and zydeco, it also proposes to offer many obscure field recordings and buried tracks from decades past. Volume one is titled after the Balfa Brothers' first jukebox hit -- ultimately known as the "popularists" of Cajun music and its longest running practitioners, Dewey Balfa only died in 1998. But don't look for any documentation unless you read German fluently; all the notes are written in Trikont's native tongue -- you'd think that with American music, marketed in the U.S., they would publish some bilingual liners like they do on many of their other projects. In any case, after the smoking opener of the title track, we get some early Cajun zydeco by the Carriere Brothers with "Robe a Parasol," which reveals the rhythmic shift from traditional Cajun music. Another interesting development is in a track called "Valse a Alida" by Aldus Roger where a pedal steel guitar shares the instrumental break with the accordion. There's also a killer two-step from Austin Pitre with acoustic National Steel slide playing, and the legendary Dennis McGee & Sady Courville with "Cowboy Waltz," a song almost mythical in its proportions in Cajun music. The Carriere Brothers take it out with a field recording of "Blue Runner," which is almost Delta blues in its construction and fiddle riffing. It's supposed to be a two-step dance but it's a smoking zydeco blues jam instead, with no accordions, just two fiddles blazing and a guitar picking up the slack in back. This is a hell of a way to send this set out, but it works. In fact, it worked so well it won the label the German Critic's Album of the Year award. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
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