Name: Je'tais Au Bal by Bluebell Cajun Dance Band
Duration: 3 min 6 s
Description: Kim, Simon and Sarah rehearsing outside in the sunshine in the Highlands of Scotland

Kim, Simon and Sarah rehearsing outside in the sunshine in the Highlands of Scotland

Je'tais Au Bal

Blues a Bebe

Bon Ton Roulet

Old time Louisiana Party Music for new times.

Our traditional old time Cajun and Creole repertoire includes material by Joe Falcon with Lionel Leleux on fiddle, The Balfa Brothers with Nathan Abshire on accordion and Dewey Balfa on fiddle, and the Accordion/Fiddle duets of Bois Sec Ardoin and Canray Fontenot. 

We also play a lot of original material written by Kim Tebble. These are in Cajun/Zydeco styles and fit well into the live dance set and usually feature vocals in English. Played back to back with the traditional songs, these numbers give a new time feel to our performances and often draw on the influences of Clifton Chenier, and the Carriere Brothers with the Lawtell Playboys – well known Creole/Zydeco bands of the 60s and 70s.

We started rehearsing this project in 2011 in the Highlands of Scotland and in Edinburgh with Simon on guitar and Kim on accordion/French vocals. Our aim was to play Cajun music for dancing in the style of the Cajun and Creole artists we admired most. We began by modelling our sound on the 1963 live recordings of Joe Falcon's Silver Bell String Band, since this was an unusually early old time live recording and we could imitate the sound of the drum parts and guitar accompaniment without the need for a bass player and drummer. Kim now plays the bass drum and hi hat of the kit with foot pedals while playing accordion and singing. Simon plays a hard on-beat on the guitar to give a simple bass pattern alternating with a swinging off-beat, and this encouraged us to enroll Sam to play the fiddle and Jen to add triangle. We've now played a few gigs in the Highlands with various line up configurations, which went really well and will appear at various festivals in 2014 including the Yorkshire Cajun Festival in March.

Je'tais Au Bal

Bluebell Cajun Dance Band

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