Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana played by the Cajuns, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Although they are two separate genres, Cajun music is often mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based zydeco music. Both are from southwest Louisiana and share French and African origins. These French Louisiana sounds have influenced American popular music for many decades, especially country music, and have influenced pop culture through mass media, such as television commercials.
Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. was an American folk musician and musicologist. He served as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
The Wheatland Music Festival is a music and arts festival organized by the Wheatland Music Organization, a non-profit organization specializing in the preservation and presentation of traditional arts and music. Community outreach services include programming for Senior facilities and schools across mid-Michigan, year-round instrument lessons, scholarship programs, Jamborees, Traditional Dances, and Wheatscouts - a free program educating children through music, dance, storytelling, crafts and nature. Each year, the organization holds its annual Traditional Arts Weekend the weekend of Memorial Day, and its annual festival during the second weekend in September in the unincorporated community of Remus in the state of Michigan, in the United States. The first Wheatland Music Festival was held August 24, 1974.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo-fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Hazel Jane Dickens was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist and guitarist. Her music was characterized not only by her high, lonesome singing style, but also by her provocative pro-union, feminist songs. Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." The New York Times extolled her as "a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music." With Alice Gerrard, Dickens was one of the first women to record a bluegrass album. She was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame alongside Gerrard in 2017.
The New Lost City Ramblers, or NLCR, was an American contemporary old-time string band that formed in New York City in 1958 during the folk revival. Mike Seeger, John Cohen and Tom Paley were its founding members. Tracy Schwarz replaced Paley, who left the group in 1962. Seeger died of cancer in 2009, Paley died in 2017, and Cohen died in 2019. NLCR participated in the old-time music revival, and directly influenced many later musicians.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who mainly played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him. He was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
John Cohen was an American musician, photographer and film maker who performed and documented the traditional music of the rural South and played a major role in the American folk music revival. In the 1950s and 60s, Cohen was a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a New York–based string band. Cohen made several expeditions to Peru to film and record the traditional culture of the Q'ero, an indigenous people. Cohen was also a professor of visual arts at SUNY Purchase College for 25 years.
Lost Bayou Ramblers is a Cajun music band from Pilette, Louisiana.
Alice Gerrard is an American bluegrass and old-time music performer, writer, editor and teacher. As a singer who plays guitar, fiddle and banjo, she performed and recorded solo and in ensembles, notably in a duo with Hazel Dickens, in The Strange Creek Singers, and as The Back Creek Buddies.
Brad Leftwich is an American old-time fiddler, banjo player, singer and teacher of traditional old-time style. He is originally from Oklahoma but has resided in Bloomington, Indiana for most of his life. He performs solo and with his long-time musical partner and wife, Linda Higginbotham, and with his band, The Humdingers, which also includes Sam Bartlett and Abby Ladin.
Allan Thomas Paley was an American guitarist, banjo and fiddle player. He was best known for his work with the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dewey Balfa was an American Cajun fiddler and singer who contributed significantly to the popularity of Cajun music. Balfa was born near Mamou, Louisiana. He is perhaps best known for his 1964 performance at the Newport Folk Festival with Gladius Thibodeaux and Vinus LeJeune, where the group received an enthusiastic response from over seventeen thousand audience members. He sang the song "Parlez Nous à Boire" in the 1981 cult film Southern Comfort, in which he had a small role.
Wilson Allen Savoy is a Grammy winning accordionist, keyboard player, fiddler and singer with the Cajun bands Pine Leaf Boys and The Band Courtbouillon, as well as a local filmmaker in Lafayette, LA. His father Marc Savoy, famous accordion builder and musician, and his mother, Ann Savoy, musician, author and music producer, are well known ambassadors and supporters of preserving the Cajun culture.
Old timefiddle is the style of American fiddling found in old-time music. Old time fiddle tunes are derived from European folk dance forms such as the jig, reel, breakdown, schottische, waltz, two-step, and polka. When the fiddle is accompanied by banjo, guitar, mandolin, or other string instruments, the configuration is called a string band. The types of tunes found in old-time fiddling are called "fiddle tunes", even when played by instruments other than a fiddle.
Cajun fiddle music is a part of the American fiddle music canon. It is derived from the music of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas, as well as sharing repertoire from the Quebec and Cape Breton Island traditions. It is one of the few extant North American folk music traditions rooted in French chanson. According to Ron Yule, "Louisiana fiddling had its birth roots in Europe, with fiddling being noted as early as the 1400s in Scotland". Zydeco music is a geographically, culturally, and musically related style.
The Lonesome Sisters, Sarah Hawker and Debra Clifford, are an American acoustic music duo. They were voted Best Acoustic Duo of 2006 by Gibson Guitars. At Merlefest 2004 they performed and they won best country song in the Merlefest Chris Austin Songwriting Contest for Sarah's song, "Forgiveness." They have recorded six CDs on their own record label, Tin Halo Music. "Follow Me Down" was voted best original song in the Clifftop WV Appalachian Stringband Festival Songwriting Contest.
Dirk Powell is an American fiddler, banjo player, and singer. Powell was born in Oberlin, Ohio into a family with deep Kentucky roots. He has lived in Louisiana since 1992. He is considered one of the world's leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles. Powell is also a recording engineer and producer, with his own studio, the Cypress House, in Breaux Bridge, near Lafayette, Louisiana. The studio is in a converted 1850s Louisiana Creole home on Bayou Teche and focuses on vintage gear and audio..
Ron Stewart is an American multi-instrumentalist in the bluegrass tradition. He plays fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and has won the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) award for Fiddle Player of the Year in 2000 and Banjo Player of the Year in 2011.
