Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

(b) French.

North-eastern. French Americans in the north-eastern USA, descendants of mid-18th-century Acadian exiles and 19th-century Québécois immigrants, have retained a rich musical heritage. Their folk-songs may be divided into four groups according to the themes of their texts. Some songs recall France, the land of the people's origins three to four centuries ago: for example, A St.-Malo beau port de mer, M'en revenant de la jolie Rochelle, En passant par la Lorraine and C'était Anne de Bretagne. These and other songs of old France were sung by successive generations of explorers as they journeyed across the North American continent and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Songs particularly associated with the voyageurs as well as with the habitants (French Canadian farmers) include Alouette, En roulant ma boule, Dans les prisons de Nantes and A la claire fontaine. Still others had their origins in new France; they reflect a simpler way of life on the farm or at sea, nostalgically remembered by the New World factory worker: Mon Merle, Youppe! Youppe! sur la rivière, Mon père n'avait fille que moi and the Acadian Partons, la mer est belle. Finally, other songs of the French American tradition were born in the USA; they are less well known and have remained more localized.

French Americans also brought with them from Canada their dance-music, notably quadrilles with two-step melodies, played on traditional instruments – harmonica (musique à bouche), jew's harp (bombarde), accordion, spoons and fiddle – to the rhythm of the clogger (tapper du pied). The diverse origins of so-called French Canadian dance-music and fiddle music are reflected in the repertory of the fiddler Omer Marcoux (d Concord, New Hampshire, 1982). Marcoux learnt fiddle from his father on a Quebec farm and from fellow loggers in camps in both the USA and Canada. The best-known dance tunes in his repertory included Le reel de Sherbrooke, Rouyn Reel, Labrador and Fisher's Hornpipe.

Another aspect of French American folk music is the gaulois and bawdy tradition, as in the drinking song Prends donc ton verre and the anticlerical ditty La bonnefemme Robert. Among Acadians there also remains an oral tradition of the sad complainte (e.g. La complainte du Juif errant).

The Catholic Church and its liturgy have played an important role in the development of French American musical traditions. In years past the Kyrie and Gloria were sometimes sung by men and women at work, but the demise of the Latin liturgy has caused a decline in this tradition. There remain some Gregorian melodies with tongue-in-cheek secular verses, for example, the folk-song Mon père, j' voudrais m' marier, sung to the vespers Psalm cix. French-language hymns, particularly those for Christmas, such as Il est né, le Divin Enfant and Dans cette étable, are widely known.

During the period 1890–1930 original composition of songs, operas and instrumental pieces flourished, and French American choirs were organized. Some of the new pieces found their way from the concert hall into the home and marketplace, and gradually into musical folklore, for example, L'amour, c'est comme d' la salade, composed in 1916 by Philias Champagne of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Cajun. The traditional folk music of the French-speaking Acadians (i.e. ‘Cajuns’) of south-western Louisiana, whose ancestors migrated to Louisiana after 1755 from what is now Nova Scotia, was originally French, but has interacted with and often absorbed the music of southern whites and blacks. In the 1920s and 30s the discovery of oil in the region attracted new people and cultures, and young Cajuns left to work elsewhere. Cajun culture, always powerfully absorptive, now extends from Louisiana into Texas and is particularly strong in such cities as Beaumont and Port Arthur, where communities of Cajuns have maintained a continuous tradition, preserving, though in modified form, the music of their forebears.

Early Cajun music was vocal and included French traditional unaccompanied ballads and drinking songs that soon took on imagery from the American frontier. The experience of exile was expressed in songs of frustrated courtship, lost love and broken families. Many foreign elements blended to create the new music that came to be called Cajun. The Cajuns adopted ‘terraced’ singing styles from the Amerindians. From Black American music they adopted syncopation, percussion idioms, improvisational singing and blues style. The most popular instrument was the fiddle, for which Cajuns developed idiosyncratic techniques, such as a self-accompanying drone. From British Americans they adopted new tunes for reels, hoedowns and square dances. Spanish influences include the guitar and a few folk tunes. Immigrants from Saint-Domingue at the turn of the 19th century brought with them a syncopated Caribbean beat. Jewish German merchants began importing diatonic accordions not long after its invention in Vienna in 1828; the accordion was popularized by Cajun and Creole musicians such as Joseph Falcon and Amédé Ardoin.

The first commercial recordings of Cajun music, produced in 1928, tended to standardize this highly innovative tradition, popularizing favourite artists and styles. Accordions displaced fiddles as the lead instrument for both domestic and public bands, and complex fiddle tunes faded from the active repertory. Fiddlers were often relegated to a duet accompaniment or simple percussive line below the melodic lead of the accordion. The duo of the Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee and the Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin brought a strong rural blues element to Cajun music. Allons à Lafayette (a tribute to one of the principal Cajun cities), the first Cajun record by Falcon and his wife Cleoma, was typical of the new style, featuring an accordion lead with percussive guitar accompaniment and high-pitched, emotionally intense vocals reminiscent of the noisy dance halls before electric amplification. Outstanding Cajun fiddlers include Leo Soileau (1930s), Harry Choates (1940s), and Dewey Balfa and Rufus Thibodeaux (after World War II), who have preserved the instrument and Louisiana French styles.

By the 1930s, changes in Cajun music reflected the Americanization of the repertory. Cajun bands abandoned the accordion in favour of string instruments that could imitate the sounds of western swing and country music. Amplification allowed fiddlers to lighten their bow strokes producing an airy, lilting style. By the 1940s, commercial recordings of Cajun music combined American styles with remnants of traditional French influence as English lyrics came to displace the traditional French lyrics. A revival of traditional Cajun music began with the music of Iry Le Jeune in 1948 and continued with Austin Pitre, Lawrence Walker and Nathan Abshire. In the 1950s, young Cajun musicians blended elements of rock and roll and country music in a new style called ‘swamp pop’. In the 1960s at the Newport Folk Festival, Cajun bands performed traditional styles reflecting traits of the American folk music revival. In the 1970s and 80s, Cajun music was featured at the Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife and the National Folk Festival, helping to inspire a Cajun renaissance in southern Louisiana. The Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa and his Balfa Brothers Band promoted this revival, reintroducing Cajun music in school programmes, local festivals, and on local radio and television programmes. The new generation of Cajun musicians includes Beausoleil, the Mamou Playboys and Ossun Express, who are replacing their elders on the southern Louisiana dance-hall circuit. The style of these younger musicians reflects contemporary influences, as the blending process at the heart of this tradition continues. (See also Zydeco).

USA, §II, 1(ii): Traditional music: European American: Western