Swamp song lyrics meaning free#

Some purists may wag their fingers, but Barry Ancelet, a professor of French and folklore at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette - and one of the deans of Cajun culture - says he isn't worried.

Swamp song lyrics meaning free#

It was a field recording from the 1950s, so the band members say they felt free to adapt it as they pleased. One of the musicians dug up a Creole song called 'Femme l'a Dit' at the Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, where he was working. They added a Mellotron, an early electronic keyboard, on one track. They ran some vocals and a guitar solo backward.

The enthusiasm of youth led to some playing around in the studio as they recorded their latest CD, Cow Island Hop. So the band's fans - and the older generation of musicians who've mentored the members of Feufollet - have all watched the band grow up onstage. He was around 8 years old at the time Feufollet recorded its first album nearly 10 years ago. They added Stafford's brother, Mike, on drums. The two Chrisses - Segura and Stafford - became the nucleus of Feufollet. 'We'd play for each other over the phone before we ever met,' Segura says. Segura says that their first collaborations took place over the phone. At the ripe old age of 12, a friend hooked him up with Chris Stafford. He was playing fiddle by the time he was 4. Chris Segura started going to hear Cajun music with his parents at the age of 2. Nevertheless, the Louisianans started playing music early - very early. Most of the members of Feufollet are too young to remember the Talking Heads' heyday. But they've also been known to toss a version of the Talking Heads' song 'Psycho Killer' into a live show. The musicians do lots of straight-ahead Cajun songs, and they clearly respect their musical heritage. And they would make up stories to explain what a feufollet was.'įeufollet, the band, is a bit of a shape-changer, too. 'They were these balls of fire they'd see in the swamp. 'People had no idea what they were,' Stafford says. Fiddler and accordionist Chris Stafford explains that the band chose the name because folk tales came up with many different meanings for 'wills o' the wisp.' Like its compatriots in the Pine Leaf Boys, the Lost Bayou Ramblers, the Red Stick Ramblers and several other local bands, Feufollet is trying to bring the sensibility of its generation to a much older style of music.įeufollet translates literally from the French as 'crazy fire.' In southwestern Louisiana, it's used to refer to the will o' the wisp: the spectral, shifting light seen over the swamps at night. There, musicians young and old are pushing the boundaries of their genres.įeufollet has been doing that for a decade, even though most of its members are still in college. Anna Laura Edmiston plays guitar and Chris Stafford plays accordion at the latter's 21st-birthday party.