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Dennis McGee
Dennis (Denus) McGee (January 26, 1893 – October 3, 1989) was one of the earliest recorded Cajun musicians. A fiddle player, he recorded and performed with Louisiana Creole people, Creole accordionist and vocalist Amédé Ardoin, with accordionist Angelas LeJeune, and with fiddlers Sady Courville (McGee's brother-in-law) and Ernest Frugé. The recordings with Courville and Frugé are among the few surviving examples of Cajun music as it existed before the influence of the accordion became prominent. McGee's repertoire included not only the waltz and the Cajun Two-Step, two-step common to Cajun music but also such dances as the One-Step, one-step, polka, mazurka, reel (dance), reel, cotillion, the varsovienne, and others. Early life Dennis McGee was the son of John McGee Sr. who was of French and Irish ancestry and Amelia, of French and Seminole Indian ancestry. Both sides of his family were Cajun. Amelia died when Dennis was two years old. His first language was French. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eunice, Louisiana
Eunice is a city in Acadia and St. Landry parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The 2010 census placed the population at 10,398, a decrease of 1,101, or 9.5 percent, from the 2000 tabulation of 11,499. The St. Landry Parish portion of Eunice is part of the Opelousas–Eunice Micropolitan Statistical Area, while the Acadia Parish portion is part of the Crowley Micropolitan Statistical Area. History One-time lawman and pioneer land developer C.C. Duson is credited with founding Eunice, which was named for his second wife, Eunice Pharr Duson. He and his brother, W.W. Duson, had already founded Crowley, Louisiana in 1887, and he looked to the north of the parish for future development. Duson bought of land from Willie Humble of Prairie Faquetaïque and mapped out a town site, laid out in lots 50-by-140 feet, 12 lots to the block. Next, he persuaded the Southern Pacific Railroad to extend a branch line from Crowley to his new town. Then he began what he and his brother ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mouthpiece), reed in a frame). The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the descant, diskant, usually on the right-hand keyboard, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side (referred to as the Musical keyboard, keyboard or sometimes the manual (music), ''manual''), and the accompaniment on Bass (sound), bass or pre-set Chord (music), chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The accordion belongs to the free-reed aerophone family. Other instruments in this family include the concertina, harmonica, and bandoneon. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo Soileau
Leo Soileau (January 19, 1904 – August 2, 1980) was one of the most prolific Cajun recording artists of the 1930s and 1940s, recording over 100 songs, which was a substantial amount considering the reluctance to record the music during its early stages. He is known as the second person to record a Cajun record and the first to record this genre with a fiddle. Family Born January 19, 1904 in Ville Platte, Louisiana, Soileau started playing music at 12 years old and made a few dollars each night. Music and career After Joe Falcon's recording of "Allons a Lafayette" became a hit, record companies were interested in finding other talent. A jeweler, Frank Dietlein Sr. of Opelousas, Louisiana, convinced Victor Records to record Soileau and Mayeus Lafleur of Basile, Louisiana and in October 18, 1928, they recorded four songs with Victor in Atlanta, Georgia. With Soileau on fiddle and Mayeus on vocal and accordion, their recording of "Mama, Where You At?" (also referred to as "Cher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cléoma Falcon
Cléoma Falcon (née Breaux; May 27, 1906 – April 8, 1941) was an American guitarist and vocalist who, along with her husband Joe Falcon, recorded one of the first known examples of Cajun music. The recording, "Allons à Lafayette" was released in 1928, and opened the way for other commercial releases of Cajun music. Aside from being a ground-breaking recording artist, Cléoma Breaux also was one of the few women to perform live, despite the social standards of the era. She was the first woman inducted into the Cajun Music Hall of Fame. Biography Cléoma Breaux was born on May 27, 1906, in Crowley, Louisiana, to an accomplished accordion player, Auguste Breaux, and his wife Mathilde Breaux. Cléoma Breaux and her brothers Amedée, Orphy, and Clifford Breaux were all taught as multi-instrumentalists, and began performing for the family's entertainment. Cléoma Breaux was capable of playing a "hard" rhythm guitar style, which was closely related to the preferred technique of la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Falcon
Joseph Falcón (September 28, 1900 – November 19, 1965) was an accordion player from southwest Louisiana, best known for producing the first recording of a Cajun song, " Allons à Lafayette," in 1928. He and his wife Cléoma Breaux left for New Orleans to record the first Cajun record and went on to perform across southern Louisiana and Texas. Early life Joe was born in Roberts Cove, Louisiana located nearby Bayou Plaquemine Brule and began playing accordion at the age of seven. He was the fifth child of Pierre Illaire Falcón and Marie Arvilia Boudreaux. His family farmed cotton and sugarcane, and they made syrup. He shares both Cajun and Isleño ancestry as his paternal great-grandparents, José Félix Falcón and María Antonia Damasa Falcón, were descendants of the Canary Islander colonists who settled in Valenzuela along Bayou Lafourche. His ancestors Cristóbal Falcón and Gaspar Falcón were born in Telde, Gran Canaria. His mother Marie was of Acadian desce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Orleans
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, most populous city in Louisiana and the French Louisiana region, the second-most populous in the Deep South, and the twelfth-most populous in the Southeastern United States. The city is coextensive with Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Orleans Parish. New Orleans serves as a major port and a commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast region. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1 million, making it the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the List of metropolitan statistical areas, 59th-most populous in the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for Music of New Orleans, its distincti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a higher economic and social status. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The France, French ''métayage'', the Catalonia, Catalan ''masoveria'', the Castile (historical region), Castilian ''mediero'', the Slavs, Slavic ''połownictwo'' and ''izdolshchina, the Italy, Italian mezzadria'', and the Islamic economics, Islamic system of ''muzara‘a'' (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping. Overview Under a sharecropping system, landowners provided a share of land to be worked by the sharecropper, and usually provided other necessities such as h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Varsovienne
The Varsoviana is both a couple dance and a melody. Whilst originally conceived as a mazurka (with it’s characteristic time and accent on the 2nd or 3rd bar) it is now regularly mislabeled as a waltz (even being known as The Waltz of Vienna). The Varsoviana is known by a variety of variations of its name (such as the Varsouvienne, Varsovienne or La Va), but it also has names which reference the distinctive ‘pause’ motif in the dance (such as Shoe the Donkey, Put your Little Foot, Cock your Leg Up) as well as titles that refer to songs which have come to be associated with the tune (e.g. Jan Pierewiet, Mascando Chicote, Turkey Rhubarb). The dance and melody is known across Europe, North America, South America and Australasia. It is one of the most well known and long lived of all the 19th century 'round' couple dances, it was one of the earliest ever "sequence" dances. It's longevity is possibly due to its distinctive choreography, in particular the novelty (for that tim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotillion
The cotillion (also cotillon or French country dance) is a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and North America. Originally for four couples in square formation, it was a courtly version of an English country dance, the forerunner of the quadrille and, in the United States, the square dance. It was for some fifty years regarded as an ideal finale to a ball but was eclipsed in the early 19th century by the ''quadrille''. It became so elaborate that it was sometimes presented as a concert dance performed by trained and rehearsed dancers. The later "German" cotillion included more couples as well as plays and games. Names The English word ' is a variation of the French (which does not have ''i'' in the last syllable). In English, it is pronounced or ; but in French, it is . The French word originally meant "petticoat (underskirt)" and is derived from Old French (‘ -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reel (dance)
The reel is a folk dance type as well as the accompanying dance tune type. Of Scottish origin, reels are also an important part of the repertoire of the fiddle traditions of Britain, Ireland and North America. In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional dances, the others being the jig, the strathspey and the waltz, and is also the name of a dance figure. In Irish dance, a reel is any dance danced to music in ''reel time'' (see below). In Irish stepdance, the reel is danced in soft shoes and is one of the first dances taught to students. There is also a treble reel, danced in hard shoes to reel music. History The reel is indigenous to Scotland. The earliest reference was in a trial of 1590, where the accused was reported to have "daunced this reill or short dance." However, the form may go back to the Middle Ages. The name may be cognate with or relate to an Old Norse form, with Suio-Gothic '' rulla'', meaning "to whirl." This became Anglo-Saxon ''hr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mazurka
The Mazurka ( Polish: ''mazurek'') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character defined mostly by the prominent mazur's "strong accents unsystematically placed on the second or third beat". The Mazurka, alongside the polka dance, became popular at the ballrooms and salons of Europe in the 19th century, particularly through the notable works by Frédéric Chopin. The mazurka (in Polish ''mazur'', the same word as the mazur) and mazurek (rural dance based on the mazur) are often confused in Western literature as the same musical form. History The folk origins of the ''Mazurk'' are three Polish folk dances which are: * '' mazur'', most characteristic due to its inconsistent rhythmic accents, * slow and melancholic '' kujawiak'', * fast '' oberek''. The ''mazurka'' is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note (quaver) pair, or an ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polka
Polka is a dance style and genre of dance music in originating in nineteenth-century Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Though generally associated with Czech and Central European culture, polka is popular throughout Europe and the Americas. History Etymology The term ''polka'' referring to the dance is believed to derive from the Czech words "půlka", meaning "half-step". Czech cultural historian Čeněk Zíbrt attributes the term to the Czech word ''půlka'' (half), referring to both the half-tempo and the half-jump step of the dance.Čeněk Zíbrt, "Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo: dějiny tance v Čechách, na Moravě, ve Slezsku a na Slovensku z věků nejstarších až do nové doby se zvláštním zřetelem k dějinám tance vůbec", Prague, 189(Google eBook)/ref> This name has been changed to "Polka" as an expression of honour and sympathy for Poland and the Poles after the November Uprising 1830-1831. "Polka" meaning, in both the Czech and Poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
