True Blues: Cedric Watson and Corey Harris

Cedric Watson:
“To propel our Louisiana culture into the future seems to be quite a task, but if one lives for the music as Cedric does, the path seems effortless. These songs may well be early brushstrokes of a life’s worth of possibilities, not only for himself, but also for the identity survival of a culture.”
—Michael Doucet

One of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole, and zydeco music in the past decade, four-time Grammy nominee Cedric Watson is fiddler, singer, accordionist, and songwriter with unlimited potential. The San Felipe, Texas, native made his first appearance at the zydeco jam at the Big Easy in Houston at just 19 years old. Just two years later, he moved to south Louisiana and immersed himself in French music. Over the next several years, Watson performed French music in 17 countries and on seven albums with various groups, including his own, Bijou Creole. Watson’s albums are a tapestry of pulsing rhythms and Creole poetry, and his unforgettable live performances are at once progressive and nostalgic.

Corey Harris:

With one foot in tradition and the other in contemporary experimentation, Corey Harris has earned critical acclaim as one of the few modern-day bluesmen able to channel the raw, direct emotion of acoustic Delta blues without coming off as an authenticity-obsessed historian. Along with Keb’ Mo’ and Alvin Youngblood Hart, Harris raised the flag of acoustic guitar blues in the mid-1990s. Although well versed in the early history of blues guitar, he is no well-mannered preservationist, mixing a considerable variety of influences—from New Orleans, the Caribbean, and Africa—into his richly expressive music.

https://coreyharris.net/

http://www.bijoucreole.com