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2004
Grammy Award Nominee
When Cajuns go out on the weekend looking for a band that will
recharge their pride and identity, they find it in Steve Riley
& the Mamou Playboys.
Steve Riley and David Greely, the founding members of the band,
have been working for over sixteen years along with Kevin Dugas
on their New Cajun Music. The knowledge of tradition gained
from their mentors, such as Dewey Balfa, Belton Richard, and
Walter Mouton, has long been second nature. On their first four
albums, one of which, Trace of Time, was a Grammy finalist,
they extended the Cajun renaissance into the nineties by exploring
obscure reaches of archival territory, bringing gems of forgotten
lyrics and melodies back to dance hall, local radio, and the
lips of Cajun youth. All this tradition provided the foundation
for some later radical unorthodoxy. The albums Bayou Ruler
and Happytown set new standards for alternative Cajun
music, as down home dance floors would empty, their fans in
shock, then slowly refill as they listened and realized that
it was Cajun music after all. Just when Steve and David were
ready to relax and go trad again, Sam Broussard, the soul of
folk heresy, joined the group - ready to immerse himself in
the music of his forbears, and to question every status quo
for miles. More recently they were joined by young bassist Brazos
Huval. This collaboration produced Bon Rêve, their latest
album, traditional as hell, yet full of innovations that are
natural and unforced enough to refresh both worldwide and Cajun
audiences, who drink it up like an ice-cold six-pack.
Here's what Dr. Barry Ancelet, professor of folklore at the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has to say about Bon Rêve:
"It's the Sgt. Pepper's of Cajun music. It's so strong
in so many areas: performance/musicianship, the poetry, the
conception, the whole album working together as a sort of a
thematic unit. It's an incredible effort. What's really remarkable
is that they're sort of competing with themselves. They're competing
with their own last effort, and that's got to be hard to do.
And yet they keep pulling it off."
"They actually do what those old masters were doing. They
improvise and create within the tradition, finding poetry in
historical manuscripts and in the language of real life, and
they manage to do this in a way that both innovates and preserves
at the same time. Balfa challenged us all to 'preserve the very
life of the tradition,' cautioning that we not try to preserve
artifacts, but rather the process that produces the music and
its makers. Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys answer that
challenge with this stunning combination of brand new old songs
and venerable new songs, all driven by breathtaking musicianship
and deeply thoughtful creativity."
In the down home dance hall the two-step and the waltz rule
the night. On festival and concert stages the Mamou Playboys
are more free to satisfy their hunger for variety and delve
into diverse facets of Cajun melody and lyric. The swagger of
the two-step can be balanced with some of the more delicate
sounds intended for the hearth or the fields. All the ingredients
of Cajun music are bathed in the concert spotlight- ancient
ballads, twin fiddle tunes, zydeco, swamp-pop, rich harmonies,
venerable new songs, and brand new old songs in a seamless blend
of preservation, discovery and invention- and it can all be
enjoyed without checking your sense of pitch at the door.
The success of Bon Rêve now seems like just a warm-up.
Their latest album, Dominos, perfects and purifies that vision, delving
deeper into rich acoustic tonalities and superb songwriting. It even
provides a flip side- a dual disc with a DVD video of four performances
as well as interviews.
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