BRATTLEBORO — On Saturday July 7, from 8-11 p.m., the Lil Orphans Creole Connection will bring the sounds of south Louisiana and the greater Caribbean basin to The Metropolis Wine Bar & Cocktail Lounge, 55 Elliot St.
Lil Orphans have been presenting their blend of Cajun and Creole music in New Hampshire and Vermont for more than 10 years, incorporating New Orleans R & B, blues, zydeco, jazz, and a variety of Caribbean Creole music from Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia and Trinidad.
For this event, the band has added members and changed the name slightly. The Lil Orphans Creole Continuum will feature New Orleans native Pete Simoneaux on fiddle and vocals, Linda Simoneaux on fiddle, accordion and vocals, Dan Kasnitz on electric bass, Walter Slowinski on clarinet, and Lisa Newell on percussion.
About the Creole Continuum, Simoneaux said, “This is going to be the debut performance of this particular group, and a new variation of our existing bands, with an acoustic focus that we hope will work really well in an intimate space like the Metropolis. We'll be featuring Walter Slowinski of Butterfly Swing on clarinet, and Lisa Newell of Gaia Roots on percussion.”
Simoneaux said that this new line-up “will be playing some of the most archaic parts of our traditional Cajun repertoire, including some twin fiddle tunes that rarely get played anymore. And we're going to mix this up with a lot of stuff from what I like to call our 'pan-creole' repertoire, which includes a lot of original Caribbean Creole things, derived from the music of Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Trinidad.”
Although the link between Louisiana and the Caribbean may not be obvious, Simoneaux said all these countries “have contributed a lot to the evolution of Cajun and Creole music in Louisiana, and to us, it's really all part of a creole continuum that pretty much circles the entire globe.”
There is no cover for music at Metropolis.