Sat 3/15 @ 8PM
As a 30-year-old musician hailing from east Texas, Cedric Watson ended up in an unlikely place, musically speaking. Instead of becoming part of Houston’s active rap scene, he ended up across the border in Lafayette, Louisiana, bringing his own sensibility to some of the distinctive region music forms in the U.S: Cajun, Creole, and zydeco.
And though those styles are often separated by a color line as well as by a sound — zydeco is traditionally black, Cajun white is rural music, and the always nebulous Creole feeds both — Watson is one of the rare performers who blends both, as he shifts between the fiddle, which dominates Cajun music, and the accordion, which gives zydeco its dancing drive.
Watson and his band Bijou Creole (“Creole jewel”) explore the many and complicated folk traditions of this melting-pot region where Spanish, French, African, Native American, and Anglo came together to create a wealth of cultural traditions. His four albums feature botch traditional music and his own compositions.
Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole will perform at the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s Happy Days Lodge as part of their Heritage series.
Tickets are $17 general public, $12 for conservancy members, $5 ages 3-12.
http://www.conservancyforcvnp.org/Cedric-Watson–Bijou-Creole