Magnolia Sisters – Stripped Down / Arhoolie CD-538

Description

CD 538
Arhoolie Records is proud to announce that the Magnolia Sister’s CD “Stripped Down” has been nominated for a 2010 Grammy in the category of Best Cajun/Zydeco Album!

The Magnolia Sisters is a Cajun music band comprised of four diversely talented singers and musicians based in the heart of Louisiana Cajun country. The group evolved from its founding members Ann Savoy and Jane Vidrine whose ten year long musical collaboration revealed the need to give a woman’s voice to Cajun music while maintaining a soulful gutsy feeling to it.

The members of the group are Ann Savoy Jane Vidrine Lisa Trahan and Anya Burgess.
The Magnolia Sisters can play many styles of French music from southwest Louisiana from dancehall Cajun to primitive Creole from house music to front porch ballads. They take beautiful songs from a long-buried wealth of Cajun jewels and sweep off the cobwebs to bring them back in all their richness.

1.A Boire A Boire
2.Tap Dance / Bernadette
3.La Valse d’Amitie (The Friendship Waltz)
4.Point Clear Blues
5.Faut Pas Tu Brailles (No Use Crying)
6.Paulina Tate
7.Jolie Petite Blonde
8.Pourquoi Tu M’as Trahi? (Why Have You Betrayed Me?)
9.Grand Texas
10.Waltz of the Bayou
11.Bon Temps Rouler
12.Marie One Step
13.Barroom Blues
14.Blues d’Orpheline (Blues of the Orphan Girl)
15.Creole Stomp
16.Goodbye Chere Amie

REVIEWS

“The latest Magnolia Sisters recording is an absolute delight. It has the feel of visiting some folks in south Louisiana who are sitting around on the porch playing folk music. Stripped Down refers to the instrumentation which is usually a fiddle or two an accordion and maybe a guitar. The drones of the fiddles bring a swamp voodoo feel to the music. The harmonies are spot on and the musicianship impeccable. This would be my choice for the [Grammy] award.”

-Wayne Greene FolkBlog

“…Two things in particular make the Magnolia Sisters stand out the first of which is their delectable harmonies. ‘A boire a boire’ features resounding full-bodied choruses sung by all. Jane Vidrine’s harmonizing above Savoy’s vocals on ‘Pourquoi tu m’as trahi?’ is not only memorable it’s quite haunting. The second thing is their emphasis on drones which is accomplished by slowly bowing against the fiddle’s open strings. It makes their music sound ancient and adds a spine-tingling sense of surrealism (‘Goodbye chere amie’) to the proceedings. For supposedly being stripped down the Magnolia Sisters still get a lot of sound by leveraging whatever’s around them.”

-Dan Willging offBeat