David Greely via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from David Greely:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: David Greely
- City: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
My Life & Work
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Bio:
David Greely’s French Louisiana music is opening a new wing in his tradition. David has taken the swampy syncopations of Cajun music and its renaissance French dialect to new level of sophistication without losing its urgency and texture. In solo acoustic performance, he sounds like two or three fiddles, weaving accompaniment to his vocals as if it’s someone else singing. Presenting his concerts in English or French, he embraces all the aspects of his heritage that a fiddle and voice can reach- ancient ballads, cane field blues, yearning waltzes and fiery two steps, and melds his ancestral legacy with his own adroit compositions and stories of the rich souls who kept this music and language alive.
David was born in Baton Rouge of Cajun and Irish ancestry, and learned Cajun music on dance hall stages throughout South Louisiana, in the archives of Cajun and Creole music at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, and from his apprenticeship to Cajun fiddle master and National Heritage Fellow Dewey Balfa. As a founding member of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, David toured Folk Festivals worldwide for 23 years, and was nominated for four Grammy Awards. He has received the Louisiana Artist Fellowship Award for Folklife Performance, and is an adjunct instructor of Cajun fiddle at the University of Louisiana.
Contact Information
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Management/Booking:
For Booking:
David Greely
david@davidgreely.com
216 Martin Street
Breaux Bridge, Louisiana 70517
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Book Purchases: http://davidgreely.com/books
- ▶ Website: http://davidgreely.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-j4ekuGxnAebh1_epOjqfg
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC-xn0a5DkyWazJKY4fcggcw
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/2EPhpTh5w1o38CGIVoKofc
My Writing
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Publications:
Books
The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music
A French/English Interlinear Translation- 22 songs
The Songs of Iry Lejeune
A French/English Interlinear Translation- 25 songs
Transcriptions and Translations
by
David Greely
These books contain transcriptions and translations of the Cajun French language found in the lyrics of the Balfa Brothers’ magnificent two first albums, and Iry Lejeune’s classic recordings.
Transcription and translations for these recordings are already available elsewhere, but these books take a radically different approach.
Here the translations are interlinear (between each line) and painstakingly literal. The reader will immediately know the meaning of each word as well as the syntax of the French spoken by the Cajuns of South Louisiana.
For example, lines like :
O, bébé, oublie pas, viens me rejoindre
Oh baby forget not come me rejoin
…have always been translated elsewhere on the page, in smooth English, with all the foreign arrangements of the words converted to the accustomed English ways of expression, like this :
Oh, baby, don’t forget, come back to me
The interlinear method may seem awkward, but it gives a much clearer picture of the structure of French expression, such as reflexive phrases like viens me rejoindre, normally translated as come back to me, when the French words are actually in this order, come me rejoin.
There are parts of words in subscript to highlight letters that are uniquely silent in the Cajun French dialect. Liquid syllables like the re in rejoindre are not often pronounced in this dialect, and are usually rendered as r’joind’. The subscript highlight leaves the word properly spelled, to help the singer learn how to write and read French, and at the same time clearly helps the singer pronounce Cajun French convincingly and helps the words fit the rhythms of the song as intended by the original singers.
The song titles are numbered according to their appearance on the track list of the CD, The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music Volumes I and II (SW-6011,) minus the instrumental tracks.
The Iry Lejeune lyrics are for all his recordings, and the book corresponds to the CD, Iry Lejeune: The Definitive Collection (Ace CDCHD 428)
It is highly recommended to learn while listening to the Balfa Brothers, or to Iry Lejeune’s recordings, so that you can imitate their accent and pronunciation, and thereby create a convincing Cajun French vocal.
Clips (more may be added)
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
