Bangor set for Folk Festival Grammy, Juno honorees among many acts to perform

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BANGOR – The pensive strains of the violin, the reedy sound of a train whistle, the full-out foot-stomping rhythm of the fiddle. Chances are we’ll hear them all when Michael and David Doucet take the stage at the American Folk Festival this weekend.

Hey, aren’t they the guys that come to Maine with that Cajun band, BeauSoleil?

Indeed, fiddler-frontman Michael Doucet and his brother, guitarist David Doucet, have stirred our souls with their band mates from one end of the state to the other. The group was a highlight of the first National Folk Festival in Bangor in 2002.

How wonderful that the Doucet brothers are returning for the first edition of the American Folk Festival. No doubt they’ll bring along some of the songs they learned from the late Dennis McGee, who made one of the first recordings of Cajun music in 1929.

In 2001, Michael Doucet used a McGee song as an excuse to tell an audience at the Maine Center for the Arts how to prepare Choupique, a mudfish that gets little respect.

The recipe calls for “red pepper, black pepper, green pepper, purple pepper, and you bake it on a plank of cypress. Then you throw away that Choupique and eat the board,” Doucet said to great laughter.

The Doucet brothers are bona fide Cajuns, probably descended from Germain Doucet dit Laverdure, who came to Acadia, now Nova Scotia, around 1632. Thousands of Acadians were deported in Le Grand Derangement of 1755, many of them winding up in Louisiana.

We can only hope that Michael and David will sing the poignant “Recherche d’Acadie” – “In Search of Acadie.”

The Doucet brothers will perform at 5:30 p.m. Saturday on the Two Rivers Stage and at 4 p.m. Sunday on the Heritage Stage. Michael Doucet is scheduled to perform with Fiddle Traditions II at 1 p.m. Sunday on the Two Rivers Stage.

Doucet, leader of BeauSoleil, based in the parish of Layfayette, La., was recently named one of 12 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship. It is the first time that an artist who had received an apprenticeship grant through the National Endowment for the Arts has gone on to be given a National Heritage Fellowship.

Also performing at the American Folk Festival will be:

. Bahamas Junkanoo Revue. This highly spirited parade group features vibrant percussive music and elaborate costumes. The Junkanoo is rooted in Christmas season celebrations held in the Bahamas during the pre-emancipation era in the 16th and 17th centuries. The revue will lead parades and stage impromptu performances throughout the festival.

. Tony Ballog and his Gypsy Orchestra. The ensemble carries on the vibrant, centuries-old tradition of the Hungarian Gypsy musician. In Bangor, Ballog brings together musicians who focus on the more traditional elements of Gypsy music: the csardas, a medium-tempo dance like the two-step; the friss csardas, a fast dance step; and the halgato, a melancholic song of no fixed rhythm in which the violinists and accompanists interact like jazz musicians.

. Sophia Bilides Trio. Bilides has been called the foremost practitioner of Smyrneika, a cabaret tradition born of Asia Minor Greek refugees in the 1930s and ’40s. Highly skilled musicians from Smyrna and Constantinople brought their musical traditions to the Greek mainland and then to America. The Smyrneika tradition encompasses richly intricate melodies and popular sing-along refrains set to sensual dance rhythms.

. John Cephas and Phil Wiggins. The two are masters of the Piedmont blues, rooted in the music of black string bands of Colonial America and the oldest form of the blues. Cephas and Wiggins began playing together after they met at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1976. Cephas was a National Heritage Fellow in 1989.

. Paul Dahlin and the Akta Spelman. The fiddle ensemble from Minnesota is dedicated to preserving traditional Swedish music. Dahlin is known as the keeper of the traditional music of the province of Dalarna, a regional style and repertoire that was thought to have disappeared. Dahlin was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship in 1994.

. Danu. The heart of Irish music remains, as it has for centuries, the “sessiun,” the informal musical and social gatherings where any and all play traditional tunes. Danu’s members never intended to form a band. What began in 1995 as a musical lark to enter a new band competition turned into much more. Danu won the competition and soon was touring the world. The Irish Herald has called them “the finest traditional band in Ireland.

. The Del McCoury Band. McCoury’s compelling singing style and inventive guitar work are at the heart of his traditional bluegrass band. The group has dominated the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual awards, receiving nearly 40 individual and group citations, including seven Entertainer of the Year honors. McCoury has been hailed as the architect of the future of bluegrass music.

. Tony Ellis. A banjo and fiddle player of astounding skill and innovation, Ellis was asked, early in his career, to join Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. His solo personal style incorporates blue grass and a slowed-down, introspective and highly melodic style.

. The Polka Family Band. The Guzevich family began performing together in the 1970s in Southern California, playing traditional Polish polka for relatives and at small gatherings. Since 1988, the band has received three Grammy nominations and twice has performed at Carnegie Hall.

. Git-Hoan Dancers. The “people of the salmon” perform dances and songs of the Tsimshian people from the Pacific coastal areas of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. Troupe members present traditional dances of the culture, once on the verge of extinction. Dancers convey the story of Tsimshian culture: legends of Mouse Woman and the Cannibal Giant, the Shaman and Killer Whale, chief of the sea.

. Wanda Jackson and the Lustre Kings. As a guitarist, singer and songwriter, 67-year-old Wanda Jackson excels at several musical genres, including country and gospel, but her enduring fame comes from her contributions to rockabilly. She has been dubbed “the Queen of Rockabilly.” Like Michael Doucet, she is one of this year’s recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship.

. Les Pied Rigolant. The Giggling Feet is an ensemble of young dancers from Lewiston-Auburn who specialize in the percussive dance style of French Canada known as la gigue, or step dancing. The ensemble was formed by the youth outreach program of the Lewiston chapter of the Association Canado-Americaine, which is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of French culture in Maine.

. Bettye Lavette. She may be the best blues singer no one ever heard of – but not for long. After four decades of singing professionally, she is now the talk of the blues world and acclaimed as a “singer’s singer.” In 2004 she was named Best Female Blues Artist in the Living Blues Critics Poll. Years ago, she toured with the James Brown Revue.

. Le Vent du Nord. The quartet is recognized as one of the most dedicated conservators of traditional Quebecois song, story, dance and music. Immigrants to Quebec came mostly from northern France. They brought with them songs, fiddles and spoons and played in the kitchens and village halls of Canada. Their shows recall the energy and spirit of those informal gatherings. In 2004 the group won a JUNO award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year-Group.

. Edwin Ortiz y su Orquesta La Romana. Since 1989, Ortiz’ music has been spicing up the clubs of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore with New York-style salsa sounds. Credit for the international popularity of salsa belongs to those who, like Ortiz’ parents, were among the 800,000 Puerto Ricans who moved to New York between 1940 and 1969. Salsa blends Afro-Latin and American musical styles, including Cuban son and mambo, Puerto Rican bomab and plena, Dominican Merengue, Cuban Yoruba ritual music, African-American big band jazz and R&B.

. Cyril Pahinui and Patrick Landeza. Hawaiian slack-key guitar began to evolve in the 1830s when Mexican and Spanish cowboys, hired by King Kamehameha III to teach Hawaiians better ranching methods, brought guitars to entertain themselves. Hawaiian cowboys quickly made the guitar part of their culture. Cyril Pahinui is the son of Hawaii’s greatest slack-key player, Gabby Pahinui. Landeza is of Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese and Irish ancestry. He is one of the few mainlanders accepted into the close-knit circle of Hawaiian slack-key artists.

. Jothi Raghaven. Master dancer, teacher and choreographer, Raghaven is one of the foremost proponents of Bharata Natyam, a 3,000-year-old southern India dance style. Like most of India’s ancient dances, it is religious in origin. Her company of performers includes 10 dancers and musicians.

. Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. Widely celebrated as the best young Cajun band in the country, Steve Riley and Mamou Playboys apply tradition-steeped sensibilities to songs that reach a broad contemporary audience. They have played at jazz festivals in Toronto, Montreal and New Orleans and on public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”

. Maine French Fiddle Masters. Mainers Lucien Mathieu, Don Roy and Erica Brown are fiddle players representing three generations of one family. Roy has been called the “dean of Franco-American fiddling in Maine.” He leads the Don Roy Trio. Mathieu was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992. Brown was named Junior Female Entertainer of the Year by the Maine Country Music Association in 2003.

. The Skatalites. Founders of the modern Jamaican sound, the Skatalites virtually invented ska, the upbeat dance music that spawned rock steady and reggae, and inspired three waves of British and American ska revivalists. Their music fuses mento, a Jamaican folk style with similarities to calypso, New Orleans R&B, jazz, jump blues and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Ska features saxophones, trumpets and trombones, jazzy solos and a galloping rhythm section.

. Espiritu del Flamenco. Flamenco music tells stories of love, death, suffering, poverty and persecution – experiences endured by the Gypsies, the first flamenco artists. Flamenco is the passionate music that evolved in the Andalusian region of southern Spain.

. Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders. The band performs classic early jazz. Drawiing heavily on the New Orleans’ Creole heritage, the band’s repertoire includes early Creole jazz tunes preformed in the traditional French of the region. It is one of the few bands that perform French Creole jazz songs and compositions made famous by Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, Joe “King” Oliver and other early New Orleans jazz greats.