SabertoothSwingDelta Bound
The first time I heard the Delta Bound album, Romain and I were on our way to Lafayette, deliberating over what music to play next. When he asked if he could get my opinion on the experimental history album he’d been working on, how could I have refused? I was trapped in the passenger seat. But despite my initial reservations, after a few songs I began to realize that I was listening to something extraordinary. Instead of recording a trad jazz album with yet another permutation of the genre’s classics, Romain places those songs within their historical context with an extended auditory meditation on musical memory and Louisiana’s violent history. The resulting album is unflinching, visionary, and sincere. I’d never heard anything like this particular assemblage—a 16th century account of HernandoDe Soto’s expedition set to a lilting clarinet, Sister Helen Prejean’s clarionvoice ringing out for justice, bittersweet avant-garde poetry, Black Masking Indians chanting on St. Joseph’s Night, Jeffrey Broussard’s turbulent accordion—whose disparate elements draw from Louisiana’s deepest wells. When Romain asked me to write the liner notes, I eagerly accepted. But I was worried that if I tried to explain the album or interpret its meaning, it would only diminish the work. Art must be allowed to reveal itself on its own terms. What I offer instead are my reflections on the broader questions posed by this album. How does music carry memory? How does New Orleans music carry memory differently? Is there meaning in historical violence? What is the meaning of Louisiana’s historical violence? These questions may be impossible to fully answer, but the urgency of the present moment compels us to at least try. -- Holly Devon
1. Introduction (Holly Devon) 2. Delta Bound (Feat. Bruce Sunpie Barnes) 3. De Soto Part 14. Le Dormeur Du Val (Feat. Anna Laura Quinn) 5. Sweet Lorna (Feat. Paul Chéenne) 6. What About This (Frank Stanford) 7. Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair8. Letter to John Paul II (Sister Helen Prejean) 9. La Chanson de Mardi Gras (Feat. The Daiquiri Queens) 10. Joie de Vivre (Zachary Richard) 11. I’m On The Wonder (Feat. Jeffery Broussard) 12. St. Malo (Feat. Cedric Watson) 13. Primer (Daiquiri René Jones) 14. Buddy Bolden’s Blues (Feat. Kid Chocolate) 15. Free Day (Sidney Bechet) 16. St. Joseph Night (Queen Mary Kay)17. De Soto Part 218. We’re A Very Young Country (Sister Helen Prejean) 19. Nuages (Feat. Anna Laura Quinn)
One Mardi Gras the people sought shelter from the freezing rain hurling itself onto Frenchmen Street. A trad jazz band was playing at the Spotted Cat, and the room was warmed by swaying bodies; the revelers floated across the dance floor like ethereal marine animals. As the rain pelted the foggywindows, those sultry old ragtime tunes floated them through temporal currents.In New Orleans, forward isn’t the only way to move through time. When Sidney Bechet recalls his grandfather, by the way he talks you’d swear he knew his grandfather as a young man, that once he even saw him fall in love. He tells his grandfather’s love story like he watched him take a young woman in his arms, right in the middle of Congo Square, and dance with her so close their fates intertwined with each other’s bodies. His father may have been the one to tell him the story, but Sidney Bechet speaks from inside the memory itself. Jelly Roll Morton played his memories across the ivory keys as he recounted them to Alan Lomax. When he remembered the way oldtimers used to play piano in the Storyville days, his fingers told the tale. In New Orleans, memories linger in the humid air. Living in New York, Jelly Roll Morton must have been surprised at how fast the current of time was moving, how quickly he was forgotten. How had the music he was just cradling in hands flown so far and so fast?
In New Orleans, legends are remembered. Wasn’t it Jelly Roll Morton who recorded Buddy Bolden’s blues, picking them out of the air just before they slipped out of reach? All the sounds in the New Orleans air of his childhood became notes in his songs, from the high society strut to the Spanish tinge. He played a naked dance like the ones the girls used to strip to in the District. None of this New York forgetting. “In New York you just get rid of it,” says Danny Barker. “In New Orleans you linger on.” Down in the bayou, music encircles time even as it moves through it. Every year in West Louisiana the Courir deMardi Gras sing old songs by the graves of fallen musicians before they fight in the fields for the contents of the gumbo pot. Every year on St. Joseph’s Night, the memory of Congo Square walks through the cracked streets, feathered and resplendent. Queen Kim of the Original Wild Tchoupitou-las carries the rhythms of a people at war. Not all memories hanging in the air are benign.
What does the land remember of its people? Tunica, Chitimacha, Natchez, Choctaw, Biloxi, Bayagoula. De Soto, Antoine DuPratz, Sieur de Bienville. (Whence came the international conquistadors and their supernatural plague?) Bambara, Mandinga, Wolof, Fulbe, Ibo, Fon, Kongo. (How much easier they seemed to make peace with the swamp.) “That square, in a way of speaking, was my grandfather’s square,” says Sidney Bechet. “He was always ahead of the music there. It was there in his mind even before he got to the square and began performing it. It was his drum, his voice, his dancing. And people had to come. They couldn’t move away from it. It was all the people.”For as long as the written word has lived in Louisiana, the highway that is the Mississippi River has run blood red. But everything can be beautiful under a poet’sgaze, and some stories are there to help you stare the Devil down.
Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes was born in 1963 in Benton, Arkansas. The tenth of eleventh children, Barnes grew up in what is now Benton’s Ralph Bunche community. Barnes’s parents were sharecroppers who worked on various plantations in southern Arkansas and the Delta before migrating north to find work in Saline County’s open-pit bauxite mines. In Bauxite, Barnes’s family lived in tar-paper shacks in what was known then as “Africa Camp” before moving to Benton.Barnes’s first exposure to music came through his father, Willie Barnes Sr., who was a blues harmonica player raised on plantations around fellow musicians such as “Big Bill” Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Roosevelt Sykes. Because his father was reluctant to pay for piano lessons for him, he taught himself instead, taking the name “Sunpie” from an uncle who routinely visited from Bastrop, Louisiana. Barnes later learned the harmonica from his father. Soon, Barnes was playing songs by his father’s favorite bluesman, Sonny Boy Williamson.Barnes started working with the National Park Service (NPS) in 1984, becoming a park ranger and naturalist at the Jean Lafitte National Park and Barataria Nature Preserve located just outside New Orleans, Louisiana. He conducted educational tours of the 23,000-acre wetland preserve, and he played in local venues in the evenings. After more than twelve years with the Barataria Preserve, Barnes went to work at the New Orleans Jazz National Park in 1999, where he played music while educating visitors about the culture and traditions of his adopted home.Alongside his band, the Louisiana Sunspots, Barnes has pioneered a unique mixture of zydeco, blues, gospel, jazz, and African and Afro-Caribbean music into a sound that he dubbed “Afro-Louisiana” music. Barnes plays accordion, harmonica, piano, trombone, rub board, and various other instruments. In August 2010, Barnes succeeded Chief Albert Morris as leader of the Northside Skull and Bones Gang, continuing a tradition that dates to 1819. Every Mardi Gras, members of the gang dress in homemade skeleton costumes and call on ancestral spirits from New Orleans and Africa. The gang gathers before dawn and, prior to marching through the street, sings songs in Créole French and English, waking the citizens of New Orleans.Bruce “Sunpie" Barnes
Paul ChéennePaul Chéenne is a saxophone player, sociologist, anthropologist, and photographer born and raised in Normandy, France. He started to learn the saxophone at the age of seven and discovered reggae music unexpectedly at the age of 10. By the age of 16, Paul founded the Clean HeArt Sound System, a DJing crew playing 100% Jamaican music. By the age of 20, he had already had the chance to work with Jamaican reggae legends such as Max Romeo, Israel Vibration, Mighty Diamonds, Lee Scratch Perry, Buju Banton, and Gyptian. After completing a degree in sociology and anthropology a few months prior to Hurricane Katrina, Paul came to New Orleans to participate in the rebuilding. Paul started playing with the Young Fellaz Brass Band in 2009 while performing with different bands and learning more about New Orleans standards and traditions. In late 2010, Paul played for the first time with TBC Brass Band, of which he has been a band member ever since.“T.B.C represents for me the best of New Orleans music, not because I’m a part of it but because I truly believe that it carries the soul of New Orleans streets and second line culture with it. No glitter, no fakeness, real powerful and soulful music. Nothing else. I feel lucky and honored to be a part of this crew and these guys are my family here. I am humbled to be a part of this tradition and cherish it every day.”Born out of close friendships and a mutual love of classic Cajun dance music, the Daiquiri Queens made their debut at the 2017 South Louisiana Blackpot Festival & Cookoff. They have since gone on to become local Louisiana favorites for late-night dances and major festivals alike, performing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Old Tone Roots MusicFestival in upstate New York and Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette.Fronted by guitarists Jamie Lynn Fontenot and Miriam McCracken, the Daiquiri Queens bring a fresh new take and style to traditional Louisiana French music. Their harmonies are paired with the seasoned playing of accordionist John Dowden and fiddler Kelli Jones, with Chelsea Moosekian on the drums. The quintet’s debut album, produced by Chris Stafford of Feufollet, was released in 2020.The Daiquiri Queens
Frank Stanford is an American poet best known for the epic, “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You”. Born in 1948 in Mississippi and raised between Memphis and northern Arkansas, Stanford was a poetry prodigy with a reputation among the Fayetteville literati.In 1975, he established Lost Roads Publishers in order to, as he put it, “reclaim the landscape of American poetry.” In 1977 he published the much awaited book, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, which brought him rising acclaim. A year later, however, Stanford took his own life, leaving with the public his poems and his legend. Frank Stanford
Sister Helen Prejean is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty. She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s vigorous opposition to all executions.Born in 1939 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957. In 1982, she moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in order to live with those she was working to help. While there, Sister Helen began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers. Two years later, when Patrick Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair, Sister Helen was there to witness his execution. After witnessing this execution, Sister Helen realized that this lethal ritual would remain unchallenged unless its secrecy was stripped away, and so she wrote a book: Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. The book and its accompanying speaking tour ignited a national debate on capital punishment and inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play, and an opera. Sister Helen works with people of all faiths as well as those who follow no established faith, but her voice has had a special resonance with her fellow Catholics. Over the decades, Sister Helen has made personal approaches to two popes, John Paul II and Pope Francis, urging them to establish the Catholic Church’s position as unequivocally opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances. After Sister Helen’s urging, under John Paul II the catechism was revised to strengthen the church’s opposition to executions, although it allowed for a very few exceptions. Not long after meeting with Sister Helen in August of 2018, Pope Francis announced new language of the Catholic Catechism which declares that the death penalty is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of a person, with no exceptions.Today capital punishment is still on the books in 30 states in the USA, but it has fallen into disuse in most of those states. Prosecutors and juries alike are turning away from death sentences, with the death penalty becoming increasingly aberrant . Sister Helen continues her work, dividing her time between educating the public, campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. Sister Helen Prejean
Cultural activist, environmentalist poet, and singer-songwriter Zachary Richard’s roots are deeply planted in his native Louisiana. Inspired by the various styles of the region, his songs go beyond the limitations of any particular genre. Zachary’s style is uniquely his own.Zachary received his first recording contract at the age of 21. With the advance money from the record company, he purchased a Cajun accordion. From that moment on, he was swept up by the French language culture of Louisiana.From 1976 until 1981, Zachary lived in Montreal, recording seven French language albums including two gold albums, Mardi Grasand Migration. Zachary returned to Louisiana in the early 1980s and began another phase of his career, this time recording in English.In 1994, after an extended absence from the French market, Zachary returned to Canada to play at the Acadian World Congress in New Brunswick. Passionately inspired by his heritage once again, Zachary began a new collection of French songs; the result was Cap Enragé. This double platinum (Canada) album established Zachary Richard as one of the foremost singer-songwriters in the French-speaking world. The celebrated Creole poet, Aimé Césaire, once said that to separate himself from one of his languages (French and Créole) would be like cutting off one of his hands. It is much the same for Zachary. Participating completely in two distinct cultures and creating in his two languages, French and English, Zachary’s artistic experience is unique. He is the most American of French songwriters, and the most French of the American.Zachary Richard
My grandparents were part of the last monolingual generation. Though they didn’t speak English there was [in Louisiana] an understanding, a reasonable agreement [between French and English speaking people]. But when my parents went to school, they were forced to speak English though they’d never before heard a word of it.While raising their children, what my parents’ generation started to do was to stop speaking to them in their mother tongue and start speaking to the children—that is, my generation—in English. As a result, we spoke English at home, but whenever a French-speaking elder was there, we spoke French out of respect.I was always fascinated by these elders because it seemed to me they enjoyed life so much more. My grandparents’ generation was always a kind of mythic generation for me. They had just an incredible love of life.I’d say my relationship to speaking French is a kind of search for that state of mind, that feeling of happiness I found in Andre Boudreaux’s sitting room. Everybody there was laughing and enjoying themselves. My grandmother put her handkerchief on the floor and danced on its four corners—she was the only one in the region who could do it.And so there was a kind of exuberance, a way of moving through life that was totally outside the very serious American view of success. Work and more work—I think that was really my impression of what we can call my American experience.Nevertheless there was that other part of my experience as a young boy, that place where we all truly enjoyed ourselves. Everything that happened there was the most joyous part of my life, and I am trying in my way to reclaim that. Joie de Vivre
Jeffery Broussard, born in 1967, is a zydeco accordion and fiddle player. Jeffery is the son of the esteemed accordionist Delton Broussard. At the age of eight he started his musical career in his father's legendary band, The Lawtell Playboys. There, Jeffery was exposed to a number of great players, including Calvin Carrere, the king of the zydeco fiddle. Jeffery has retained the precious melodies and songs he heard at home, at social gatherings, and on the band stand.Louisiana is a hotbed of creativity and culture, the flames of which have been stoked by the Creole people. Zydeco was originally called "Creole music" and it combines European, African, and Caribbean musical traditions with syncopated rhythms. Within the Zydeco musical community, the bilingual Jeffery Broussard is renowned for his skillful use of the accordion and the fiddle. From the depths of despair in the bluesy tracks to giving you the time of your life inthe party tracks, Jeffery Broussard knows how to impart emotion to his crowds. Jeffery Broussard and Robbie Robinson founded Zydeco Force in the late 1980s, a band who was at the forefront of the nouveau zydeco movement. Jeffery's accordion and vocals defined the nouveau style of Creole music. He incorporated the soulful sounds of R&B into contemporary zydeco music and dance. Since then, Broussard has come full circle in his career. He grew up in the traditional zydeco, brought in a new sound in the 1980s, and has now returned to his roots. With his band, Jeffery Broussard & The Creole Cowboys, Jeffery is cultivating and inspiring new generations of Creole Zydeco fans.In 2008, music journalist Herman Fuselier wrote, "If the crown (for King of Zydeco) was resurrected, my top candidate would be Jeffery Broussard. My idea of king is not the guy with the hottest band, most popular song, or most women around the bandstand. I think of a musician who can command the accordion like no other. That's easily Jeffery Broussard, who is pound for pound the best zydeco accordion player around."Jeffery Broussard
One of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco (Louisiana French) music over the last decade, Cedric Watson is a four-time Grammy nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist, and songwriter with seemingly unlimited potential.Originally from San Felipe, Texas, Cedric made his first appearance at the age of 19 at the Zydeco Jam in Houston. Just two years later, he moved to South Louisiana, quickly immersing himself in French music and language. Over the next several years, Cedric performed French music in 17 countries and on seven full-length albums with various groups, including the Pine Leaf Boys, Corey Ledet, Les Amis Creole with Ed Poullard and J.B. Adams, and with his own group, Bijou Creole.Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole resurrect the ancient sounds of the French and Spanish contra dance and bourré alongside the spiritual rhythms of the tribes of West Africa, who were sold as slaves in the Carribean and Louisiana by the French and Spanish.Cedric plays everything from forgotten Creole melodies and obscure Dennis McGee reels to more modern Cajun and Zydeco songs, even occasionally throwing in a bluegrass fiddle tune or an old string band number. He is also a prolific songwriter, writing almost all of his songs on his double row Hohner accordion. Cedric’s songs channel his diverse ancestry (African, French, Native American and Spanish) to create his own brand of sounds.Cedric Watson is careful to acknowledge the full range of musical influences in the work. As he puts it, “We don’t want to forget that one of the biggest contributions to our culture, music and heritage was made by the Native Americans. I find that the old Zydeco rhythms sound like a mix of African and Native American ceremonial rhythms.”Cedric Watson
Daiquiri grew up in different parts of New Orleans, studying at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and then the University of South Florida, where they lived after Hurricane Katrina. They double majored in gender studies and anthropology with a minor in religiousstudies, and got involved with the slam poetry and music scenes, playing first guitar, then banjo, and finally harp.Fate seems to have played a crucial role in Daiquiri’s development as an artist: they are tone-deaf, which naturally led to spoken word instead of singing. Later, they switched instruments after a musician friend couldn’t fit their harp into the tour van and entrusted it to them. The eldest of four, Daiquiri would make up stories to entertain their younger siblings on long car trips and in the bedroom they all shared together up until high school. Poetry on the page is quite literally two-dimensional. Performed on stage, a third axis adds a whole new dimension to the same words; timbre of voice, rhythm and timing, body language and visual style. Daiquiri’s performances go even further, creating a four-dimensional poetic space where text and music combine with experimental theatre and improvisatory storytelling. Every performance is a séance, a lucid dream we are invited into, governed by chance and the whims of the mystical artistic force which Federico García Lorca called duende.Daiquiri embodies the artist as seeker, always surging forward and breaking new ground. “I almost never repeat a story, it would get boring,” they said.All those stories, existing only for whoever happened to be in the room, a fleeting synthesis of memory and imagination that Daiquiri has zero attachment to—they’ll make up new stories next week. “Sometimes it’s just an act of tortured joy when the adrenaline hits before a performance and the ideas start talking to each other. A physiological thing. I have to hypnotize myself into performing. I have to seduce myself, in a way—and that’s when the piece has its own life.”Daiquiri René Jones
New Orleans native Kid Chocolate picked up the trumpet at the age of nine and has toured the world playing music since the age of 15. The protégé of great musicians such as Clyde Kerr Jr., Sam Alcorn, Greg Stafford, Leroy Jones, and many more, Kid went on to become Dr. John’s trumpeter. He has won a Latin Billboard Award, two Grammy nominations and one Grammy in 2010. Kid comes from some humble roots, and he came by his choice of instrument in an unusual way. “My mother took me to Maw Maw and Pop’s house, and after a little rummaging, we came up with a clarinet and a cornet,” he says. “My mother told me that whichever is the cheapest to repair, that is the instrument you’ll play.”After Katrina, Kid Chocolate had a scare with Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis. For someone who makes a living playing a trumpet, it’s a terrifying condition. “I almost went crazy,” he says. “I woke up one morning and couldn’t move the right side of my face.” He was agonized at canceling all his upcoming performances, until he called his friend Irvin Mayfield, with whom he was supposed to go on tour. “[Mayfield] said, ‘Well, I guess you’ll just be a singing, tambourine-playin’ mother—‘til you can play your horn again.’” Mayfield’s kindness and the success of the tour carried him until he recovered.He now leads a seven piece band of the finest young musicians in the city. Their music consists of original music fusing all of Kid’s favorite musical elements coupled with his renditions of New Orleans Jazz/Blues/R&B classics. This is the expression of Kid Chocolate’s understanding of Traditional New Orleans Music.He also enjoys the time spent working with students. “There’s nothing like when you’ve been explaining the same thing over and over for weeks and weeks, and then, a student finally has that ‘a-ha’ moment. Now they’re ready to show that they’ve really learned because true learning is when you begin to do what you know.”Kid Chocolate
Big Queen Mary Kay Stevenson was only eight years old when her mother, Big Queen Mercy (Mercedes Stevenson), and two friends masked for the first time as Baby Dolls (a popular Black Masking tradition in New Orleans). “She and her friends thought they were cute”, Mercedes recalled, “Everybody would say ‘Oh, here come the Baby Dolls’.” Three years later, Mercedes joined the gang of Chief Jolly (George Landry), the founder of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Black Masking Indians who would later record a legendary eponymous album with the Neville Brothers, Mr. Landry’s nephews. In 2015, just before she passed away, Big Queen Mercy gave the gang to Big Chief John Ellis and now Big Queen Mary Kay and the family continue as the Original Wild Tchoupitoulas (OTW).On St. Joseph’s Night at 45 Tchoup, the OTW’s historical headquarters, this history is still alive. “You know the Neville Brothers used to practice here with us”, Queen Mary Kay tells us, “It was just like that, everyone had to pick up an instrument, play something.” Singing along with Big Chief John Ellison, Baby Doll Tamara Stevenson, and Ambassador Uncle Clyde Adams, Queen May Kay’s exultant declarations bind together past and present as they stop at different porches in the neighborhood, where old acquaintances come out and join the chanting.For the Big Queen, it is an honor to carry on the traditions she remembers so clearly from her own childhood. “I remember as a little girl,” she says, “there was this organization called the Buzzards. Early Mardi Gras morning, we had to get ready for my mom but my grandma would always allow us to watch them guys come out. They had these little baskets full of flowers and they would kiss the women and give them flowers. And the whole while I’m thinking ‘I hope I get a flower’. I could never get a flower! But I understood the uniqueness, that it was their culture, their thing, and I’ve learned to understand that, in life, if you don’t get your own thing and understand what you need to be doing, you gonna be totally lost. That experience right there allowed me to appreciate being an Indian and appreciate those who came before me, and did what they did to hold on to what we got.”Queen Mary Kay
Arrangement:Olivier Court Track 11Sabertooth Swing:Dan Ruch Trumpet, VocalsAlex Canales Saxophones, ClarinetChris Butcher TromboneRomain Beauxis GuitarSpike Perkins BassRobert Montgomery DrumsContributors:Holly Devon Reading, track 1Bruce Sunpie Barnes Accordion, track 2Armando Leduc-Cruz Reading, tracks 3 & 17Anna Laura Quinn Vocals, tracks 4 & 19Seth Bailin Saxophone, tracks 2, 5, 7 & 14Paul Chéenne Saxophone, track 5Ryan Hanseler Piano, track 11Cedric Watson Reading, track 12Sam Dickey Guitar, Ngoni, tracks 12 & 18Daiquiri René Jones Reading, Harp, track 13Kid Chocolate Trumpet, Vocals, track 14Original Compositions:Gabriel Richards Tracks 3 & 6Stephen Montalvo Track 4Daiquiri René Jones Track 13Jeremy Thomas Track 15Chris Butcher Track 17Sam Dickey Track 18Artwork: Henry LipkisBen Myers Reading, track 6Kalei Yamanoha Accordion, track 6Sister Helen Prejean Reading, tracks 8 & 18 Jamie Lynn Fontenot Vocals, track 9Miriam McCracken Vocals, track 9Zachary Richard Reading, track 10Jeffery Broussard Accordion, Vocals, track 11Jeremy Thomas Reading, track 15Melony Jackson Vocals, track 15Queen Mary Kay Vocals, track 17Weedie Braimah Percussions, track 18Production: Romain Beauxis, Chris Butcher & Holly DevonEngineered and mixed by: Chris Butcher, Butcher Studios, New OrleansMastered by: Kevin Nix - lnixmastering.com