event details

Southern Routes featuring Dirk Powell Band and Christine Balfa & Balfa Toujours, plus special guests

Sunday 27th January 2008, 8.00pm

Old Fruitmarket :

Please Note: This is a past event event.

Family connections – between both the performers themselves, and the musical traditions they represent – are the keynote of this very special collaboration, featuring top contemporary Cajun outfit Balfa Toujours and fiddle-led Appalachian specialists the Dirk Powell Band.

The most immediate link is that of husband and wife Powell, who doubles as accordionist in Balfa Toujours, and its singer/guitarist Christine Balfa, who founded the group in honour of her father, the legendary fiddler Dewey Balfa, following his death in 1992.

Although Cajun and Appalachian music seem to form two highly distinct strands within the US folk tradition, tonight will explore the extensive historical and cultural overlap between them, exemplified by the fact that some of the most famous Cajun dynasties – including the Balfas – originally arrived in Louisiana as English-speakers from North Carolina and Virginia. Both born out of egalitarian frontier communities, each with a deep historical resistance to English domination, these not-so-distant cousins promise a truly harmonious reunion.