WASHINGTON, D.C. – Michael Doucet, a Cajun fiddler, composer and bandleader, is one of 12 recipients of a National Heritage Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts announced Tuesday. Doucet (pronounced do-SAY) lives in Lafayette, La., and performed with Beausoleil at the National Folk Festival in Bangor in 2002. He will perform in August at the city’s inaugural American Folk Festival. Doucet’s fellowship marks the first time that an artist who was first recognized through an NEA-funded apprenticeship grant later was given a Heritage Fellowship, which recognizes artistic excellence, cultural authenticity and contributions to the field.

The fellowship is the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts and includes a one-time award of $20,000. Recipients will also attend an awards ceremony in September in Washington, D.C.

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia said, “The NEA’s National Heritage Fellowships honor the individuals who preserve America’s folk and traditional arts. These masterful artists and the cultural legacies they embody are so often overlooked by mainstream media, that it is a special thrill to give them proper recognition.”

Other 2005 fellows include Eldrid Skjold Arntzen, a Norweigan American rosemaler, Earl Barthe, a decorative building craftsman, Chuck Brown, an African American musical innovator, Jerry Grcevich, a Tamburitza musician, Grave Henderson Nez, a Navajo weaver, Wanda Jackson, an early country, rockabilly and gospel singer, Hermina Albarran Romero, a paper-cutting artist, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, a Yiddish singer, poet and songwriter, Albertina Walker, a gospel singer and James Ka’upena Wong, a Hawaiian chanter. Janette Carter, a member of the famed Carter family and an Appalachian musician and advocate, was given the 2005 Bess Lomax Hawes Award.

The honorees join the ranks of previous Heritage Fellows, including bluesman B.B. King, Irish stepdancer Michael Flatley, cowboy poet Wally McRae and acclaimed performers Shirley Caesar, Doc Watson, and Bill Monroe, as well as National Folk Festival producer Joe Wilson. Since 1982, the Endowment has awarded more than 304 National Heritage Fellowships. Recipients are nominated, often by members of their own communities, and then judged by a panel on the basis of continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners or teachers.