>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
[ Silence ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Hey there everyone.
I want to welcome you today.
My name is Betsy Peterson, I'm the Director
of the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress.
And of behalf of the entire staff of the Folklife Center
and indeed the entire Library, I want to welcome you
to the very first time concert
of the Homegrown Concert series for 2012.
We have eight lined up, and this is our inaugural one.
The Homegrown Concert series is a vigil for us
to feature the very best
of traditional music throughout the country.
And in developing the concert series,
the American Folklife Center staff works with folk arts coordinators
in states throughout the country.
And in doing that, it allows us to bring some
of the best traditional music here to DC to share with everyone.
We also work collaboratively
with the Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center.
And in this particular instance, with the Smithsonian Institution
because our featured artist today will be working there next week,
so you'll have a couple of opportunities.
At any rate, today's performance will be recorded for the collections
of the AFC archive and will eventually be put up as webcast
on our website, so feature generations will be able
to enjoy this moment and this music.
But, in doing that, I just want to remind you
if you haven't turned off your cell phones,
to please do so now unless you want it to be preserved
for prosperity in our archive as well.
Today, we have a very special concert
of French Creole music from Missouri.
And I know most people were familiar with Cajun Music in Louisiana,
or French-Canadian music in New England, or North of the border.
But there is also a vital tradition of French music in Missouri,
in Illinois that has to do with the United States of --
or is a legacy of the United States purchasing that region
through the Louisiana purchase.
And today, we're presenting one
of the very best groups in that tradition.
To tell you just a little bit more about it though,
I'm going to welcome Matt Meacham who is the folklorist
that I mentioned, or one of them that I mentioned that we work with.
He's a folklorist musician and writer who has worked
in Missouri and Illinois.
And he can tell you a little bit more
about what you're going to hear.
So, please, give a welcome to Matt Meacham.
[ Applause ]
>> Matt Meacham: Thank you very much.
It's an honor and a pleasure to be here at the Library
of Congress representing my friend's Lisa Higgins and Deb Bailey
of the Missouri Folk Arts Program.
It would be difficult to overstate how much they contribute
to the conservation and ongoing vitality
of folk culture in Missouri.
And it's always a privilege to work with them.
One of the oldest extant communities in the Show-Me State is Old Mines,
established in the early 18th century by French colonists
who were drawn by the areas mineral resources.
Located in the Ozarks 65 miles Southwest of Saint Louis, Old Mines,
for much if it's history, was more isolated
than the historically French Missouri towns near the Mississippi
River such as Saint Genevieve and Saint Charles.
Consequently, the culture of Old Mines has been less subject
to external influences overtime
and French Creole folkways have persisted there
to a remarkable degree.
Dennis Stroughmatt made his first visit to Old Mines in 1990,
a native of southeastern Illinois, Dennis was keenly curious
about the many folk cultures represented throughout the
Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash Valleys
where his family had been living
and working along the rivers for several generations.
As a student majoring in historic preservation
in Southeast Missouri State University, he wanted to learn
in greater depth about the region's French Creole Culture and was told
that Old Mines is the place to go.
Over the next three years, he documented the language, history,
stories, and songs shared by such residents as Annie Pashia,
Natalie Villmer, Kent Beaulne, and many others.
He also learned fiddle techniques and tunes from Roy and Pete Boyer
and Charlie Pashia, and his informal apprenticeships
with them became central to his own artistic development.
Since then, Dennis has lived, studied,
and worked in South Louisiana in Quebec.
And he and his family now lived in the house in which he was raised
in the small town of Albion, Illinois.
He has made multiple critically acclaimed recordings
and his outstanding musicianship and talent for engaging
with audiences have taken him to concert and festival stages
from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to Denver.
But perhaps his proudest accomplishments are his
indispensable contributions to the perpetuation of French Creole Music
within the Old Mines community itself including his performances
at the Fete de L'Automne.
It was his mentor Roy Boyer who bestowed upon him the responsibility
of providing music for that annual gathering,
an unmistakable stamp of community validation.
Dennis Stroughmatt has done something
to which many cultural specialists aspire,
but which relatively few fully achieved.
Like Alan Jabbour, the first Director
of the American Folkfile Center, and like Missourians' Howard Marshall
and Meredith Cisco, he has seamlessly integrated his role
as cultural documentarian with his role
as cultural practitioner transcending the distinction
between community guest and community member.
Joining Dennis today are his wife Jennifer, a native of Chicago
with French-Canadian ancestry who will be singing
and playing the triangle, bassist Jim Willgoose,
originally from Boston but transplanted in Southern Illinois,
and guitarist and mandolinist Rob Krumm,
who also has French Creole ancestry and lives
in the historic French settlement of Cahokia, Illinois.
Please welcome to the Library of Congress for the first performance
in the American Folklife Center's 2012 Homegrown Concert series,
Dennis Stroughmatt et l'Esprit Creole.
[ Applause ]
[ Music ]
[ Singing ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: All right.
Merci
[ speaks in French ]
You all know it as Illinois and Missouri.
[Laughter] We're from the Illinois Country, Missouri and Illinois.
Thank you very much.
And we're here to present for you the French Creole Music of our area
that has been around for a very, very long time.
And a lot of people, I'd say, have forgotten sometimes about our music
and culture, but we're here to say, "Guess what?
We didn't go anywhere, we're still there."
[Applause] And we're going to do a song here for you
that actually originally comes from just up a river to me
on the Wabash River, a song called "Grandmere se plainte,"
which means "Grandmother complains."
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Thank you.
Listen, I have to tell you a little bit about that song.
That's actually -- it's a song from Vincennes, Indiana,
but it's actually a tune that I learned a long,
long time ago from a great singer and lady from Potosi,
Missouri by the name of Aida Portel [phonetic].
And I think she would be thrilled to know that we're playing here today
because she used to sing this song for me and she always told me
because I didn't know all those years ago
that I would actually be performing any of these tunes for anybody.
And she always told me, she said, "Dennis," she says,
"if you ever get a chance to tell anybody,
tell them about this song, what it was about."
And so, what it's about is a little girl who is complaining
about her grandmother, or actually the grandmother is complaining
about the grandfather because the grandmother is cold, it's the middle
of winter, and she needs some firewood and some food.
So, she sends the grandfather off in the middle of the woods
to go find some firewood.
The thing about it is,
is the grandfather never comes back in the song.
Well, we ask a lot of people usually why they think the grandfather never
came back.
A lot of people always, "Well,
because the grandmother was complaining,
was yelling at the grandfather, that's why he didn't come back."
One time, Rob and I were actually playing out on Montana.
How many of you all have been to Montana before?
[Applause] Yeah, they got a lot of casinos out there, you know?
And we were playing out there and we asked the audience,
"Why do you think the grandfather didn't come back?"
And some guy in the audience yells, "He went to the casino!"
So, I was like, I guess it depends where you're from.
But actually what happened is the grandfather got eaten by a wolf.
For those that speak French, but Miss Aida told me, she said,
"Dennis," she said, "be sure and tell everybody
that this song was a love story."
Because, see, what happened was the grandmother continues to complain
in the store about the fact that she's still cold and hungry
and really didn't care what happened to the grandfather as long
as somebody showed up with some firewood.
That is an Illinois country love story right there.
[Laughter] All right.
We'll do a tune here for you, there was a great fiddle player guy
that I never knew, a guy by the name of Joe Polly.
And actually who played here many, many years ago in the 1970s,
and it's a big thrill again for us to-- because I think--
since Joe Polly was here, I think this is the first that the Missouri
and Illinois French Creole Music has been formed--
performed here in Washington DC since the 1970s.
So, I'm really excited to be here for that, and this was a tune
that Joe did that I actually learned from Roy Boyer,
who was a fiddle player who studied a lot with--
and hang around a lot with Joe mainly at the barber shop.
That's one of the way that music was passed around in this area,
not usually by people showing up and recording you,
but by just hanging out, and that's one of the ways
that really the traditions and the language
and the culture has been passed on.
So, other than the fact that I don't have name for this tune
and nobody really does, we just call it the Polly's Reel.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Thank you very much.
It's one of the biggest treasures that we have in there,
are the old fiddle tunes.
But also, another treasure of our area that sometimes a lot
of people always ask and they always --
usually after they've heard us play sometimes at different part
of the country, they will come up to us and say, "Wow!
We never knew that there were Cajuns in Missouri."
And we all say, "We didn't either.
Yeah! We didn't either.
We didn't know there were Cajuns either in Missouri."
But a lot of people sometimes confuse our music with Cajun music.
Sometimes, they confuse it with Quebecois music.
And one of the interesting things
about our music is there's a good reason for the confusion
because there is similarity sometimes between our music
and Cajun music in Louisiana, and between our music in Quebec.
And one of those traditions that you find in both places
that we have is this very, very strong bouillon tradition and I have
to quickly teach you all what bouillon is.
How many of you all know what bouillon is?
Anybody know what bouillon is?
I know you know what bouillon is.
[Laughter]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Bouillon?
Bouillon? How many of you know what a bouillon cube is?
You know, you go take your little Lipton cube, you know,
you pop it in the water and all of a sudden, you got soup.
Well, see, a bouillon in Missouri is a house party.
So, I bet you never knew that when you pop that cube in the water
that you were having your own little party.
[Laughter] So, essentially it's a party in a box.
So--
>> Rob Krumm: Party in a cube!
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Party in a cube, that's right.
So, the tradition, one of the traditions
at the bouillon is something called "Chanson a repondre,"
which is the one of ways-- one of the ways that French culture
and the language has disseminated through the years
because there is not been French taught in the schools
in South East Missouri and South Western Illinois
for over a hundred years.
And so, it's been impossible to teach French other
than through the home and through these parties.
And this is a tune that I learned from Annie Pashia,
one of the greatest, if not the greatest signer
that I never ever knew from the Old Mines area in Missouri,
and this is a tune called La Rose d'En Bois,
which is kind of like our local version of Little Red Riding Hood,
except that there is no Riding Hood and there are no wolves.
And actually, to be honest with you, there's really nothing
about the story that has anything to do with Little Red Riding Hood.
[Laughter] But we always tell people
that because otherwise they wouldn't understand
that it's kind of a fairy tale song.
And we'll do it for, but this is a clapping tune.
Now, if anybody here in the audience speaks French
and you can catch the lyrics as they're coming by fast and you want
to shout them back at us, that would be great.
And if you don't, Rob is going to show you how
to do it in an official manner.
>> Rob Krumm: Yeah, you know, if you just want to participate, well,
you're certainly welcome to clap.
And then if you don't know the words, you know,
if you say something as articulate as blah, blah, blah, blah,
[laughter] that, you know, that will work as a start,
but if you really want to do it, you know, authentically,
you kind of want to say, "Bluh, bluh, bluh," okay?
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Yeah, and bluh, bluh, bluh.
>> Rob Krumm: Accent Francais.
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: That's right, you want to get the accent.
>> All right, let's try to do it.
[Clapping]
>> All right, if you all want to clap along, we'd appreciate it.
And I'm going to do my best not to forget the words.
[ Clapping ]
[ Singing in French ]
>> All right.
[Applause]
>> Rob Krumm: Thank you all.
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: A lot of times, people ask us about the songs
in our area and they say, "Well, how old are some
of the tunes that you do?"
Well, we're going to a song here for you that we bet is probably so old
that it's at least twice the age of even, well,
the founding of North America by Europeans.
It could tell you about that, about --
you can go back 400 years and this song is probably
about twice as old as that.
This is a song, this is a traditional tune,
something called La Guillannee, which is a tune
that we do every year as a tradition, not only a song,
but in which people put on masks and they gather and paint their faces
and they go house to house begging a food --
for food and drink along the Mississippi River.
They used to do it along the Wabash too.
Still do this in Prairie du Roche,
Illinois in Saint, Genevieve Missouri.
And it's a tradition of charity,
very similar to the mumming traditions in England, in --
on the British Isles, also a similar to the Mardi Gras,
and actually the Guillannee itself is the kickoff
to the entire season of carnival.
And like I said, this is a tradition that's been going on for 300 years
on our part of the country.
I've ran the Guillannee many times Prairie du Roche, Illinois,
and I usually always carry the banner
of being the only sober fiddle player left at the end of the night
when we ran because one of the things that you do is--
>> Rob Krumm: Somebody has to do it.
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Somebody has to do it.
They ran house to house, and, well, it used--
you take wagons years ago, and now they take a bus.
But, the idea is you go house to house and sing some songs
and the opportunity to do is eat and drink as much
as you possibly can before midnight.
And then they have a series, you'd save some of the food
and you have bouillons all the way through the series,
through the season of Carnival ending
up with the Mardi Gras, the Mardi Gras.
So, we'll do a little bit of the Guillannee for you.
Depending on what little village you're from,
this song can have either like 22 to 30 verses in it,
and I'm not doing them all.
So, we'll just do a few of them.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Yeah, that's a little bit
of the Guillannee for you.
[Applause] Now, we're going to have to do-- I always say that, you know,
Cajuns have kind of cornered the market on the Mardi Gras,
but they're not the only ones who have it.
Actually, we have the tradition of the Mardi Gras
in our area very much too.
In fact, they've reconstituted, and some traditions have never stopped
in places like St. Genevieve, Missouri, and even in Old Mines,
Missouri, but places like Vincennes, Indiana and Prairie du Roche,
Illinois and even and Cahokia have
through the years reconstituted the old tradition of the Mardi Gras
which is identical to that of the Guillannee, too.
And this is an old song that I learned
from a gentleman from Old Mines.
It was this kind of a tune that he used to hear sung
when he was a very, very young man.
Mr. Tebeau [spelling?] used to say that when the Mardi Gras would come
to his house, the Mardi Gras was like the Guillannee,
and he said that it was really not Mardi Gras
until the pretty girls come around.
And this is a song for you we come to call "Le beau Mardi Gras,"
which means a beautiful Mardi Gras.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Yeah.
[Applause] Well, I've got a question for you.
How many of you all may have heard another song going in on that song?
Something that you might have recognized the melody
because the same thing happened to me when I was talking
to Mr. Joe Tebeau learning this song from him, and I said, "You know,
that sounds like another song in there."
And when I told him the song that I thought it was, he looked at me kind
of perplexed and he said, "I never heard of it."
But, now, I'm going to play the song for you that I thought I heard:
[Singing] Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.
Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.
Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.
Skip to the Mardi Gras.
Dennis Stroughmatt: [Laughter] No, it's not the same,
but there's a part of the tradition is in there,
and of course Mr. Tebeau looked at me and he goes, "I've never heard
of Skip to my Lou before."
And I realized that's a song that kids learn at school,
he never went to school, so he wouldn't have known it.
[Laughter] We're going to do a tune here for you,
this is something called Old Man Lucky or Vieil Homme Chanceux
in French, and this is a tune that I learned from a great fiddle player
in the area, a guy named Charlie Pashia.
He's a real sweetheart of a guy, and he can play all kinds of instruments
and he was just a really fun guy.
He knew all kinds of old tunes, and one of the hardest things in getting
from him though is he loved to play different kinds of fiddle tunes,
not just French tunes, and so he might be--
he might play a French tune and then turn right around
and play something like, you know,
Hank Williams' tune or a Bob Wills' song.
And then you'd have to kind of push him to get him back to play
into the French tunes, but he knew them and he knew lots of them,
and this is one of them, something
that we just called Old Man Lucky or Vieil Homme Chanceux.
[Music] Something Charlie always used to do, he always want to let
to know the band-- let the band know what the tempo was to the song.
So, he'd always kind of do something like this.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Thank you.
There's an old traditional tune for you, this is probably one
of the most prolific songs from our region,
a tune called La belle blondine, which if any of you are familiar
with the story of Lizzie Borden, this is kind of the
like the Missouri, Illinois version of Lizzie Borden.
And a tune that, well, we like to explain that a lot of times,
the ballads that we do, usually it seems like by the end
of the song no matter which ballad it is, somebody always ends
up dead before one of these songs.
It's just something as a part of the tradition, I don't know why.
I think every time somebody died,
somebody wrote a song about it, it seems like.
So, this is one of those tunes we come to call La belle blondine.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
All right, thank you.
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Well, I think we've got time,
just enough time left then we're going
to do a few more songs for you.
And at this point, I would really
like to bring my wife Jennifer Stroughmatt to the stage.
She has played with me off and on for years a long time,
and even started playing guitar years ago and "tit-fer" as they say
in Louisiana and Missouri, in Illinois French,
we call it "boss triangle,"[spelling?] and--
but she started hanging out with bouillon parties, well,
over 11 years ago, almost 12 years ago, and used to hang
around a guy there at some of the bouillon parties,
a guy that has a nickname locally called
"Gros Vent," which means big wind.
And one of the things you'll find about a lot of the French
in our part of the country, all of them have nicknames
that usually stick and never go away.
And-- so-- but we're going to do a tune here for you.
We were going to do a slow waltz,
but I think we'll do a fast one first.
We'll do--
>> Jennifer Stroughmatt: Sounds good.
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Sounds good.
Okay, we'll do one here
for you something called D'ou Viens-Tu Berger.
This is the song that's actually a Christmas tune, but--
the lady I learned from, Miss Aida Portel, she always liked
to do it slow, but when you-- if you were ever at the bouillon parties
and some of the dances that I went to, you had people like Roy Boyer
and Charlie who would take the song and double time it and turned it
into a dance tune, into a reel.
And I was basically told that some of the ladies in the area,
if they heard that Charlie was doing that,
that they would probably would have boxed him for it,
but unfortunately they're not here today,
so we're going to do it double time.
>> Jennifer Stroughmatt: Among other things, right?
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: That's right.
We're going to do it double time,
we're going to do "D'ou Viens-Tu Berger?"
for "Oh shepherd, where did you come from?"
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Yeah, D'ou Viens-Tu?
[Applause] Thank you.
Well, I'm going to do a song here where I don't hardly have to sing
at all, which is kind of nice.
[Laughter] This is a fun little tune that we're going to do for you.
This is actually-- we've talked a little bit about some
of the other group of French known as Cajuns in Louisiana,
we always say the other French, you know.
And-- but actually, there's two others
or three others depending on how you look at it.
But it's all-- we always have fun with all of music,
but this is an interesting case of a song where not a whole lot of songs
that I find, you know, and have found concurrently
in all the different places in North America, you know, a lot--
at least a lot of the songs that have survived
in the Midwest not as many of them.
There might be half a dozen tunes that we have really kind
of in common with Quebec and--
but even way fewer than that with the state of Louisiana.
But, every now and again, there are certain songs that come along
that we do find are very similar, in fact, almost dead on.
And this is a tune that was brought in by the Spanish in the latter part
of the 1700s that came into Louisiana.
When the Spanish controlled Louisiana before the Louisiana
Purchase, Saint Louis, Missouri was actually the upper--
was the capital of upper Louisiana and administrative center.
So, there were a lot of Spanish who came through the area
and they brought in some other culture
and folk groups, and even opera.
And this was a song that was brought in that I learned
at the bouillon parties and would come to find
out that it's actually very well-known in Cajun country,
too and it's widely popular in Cajun country.
And so, the first time I went down there, it was kind of my in,
because it was the only song I knew, for the most part,
but it's a tune called "Je Suis Passe Devant Votre Porte,"
which means "I passed in front of your door and you were dead."
[Laughter] It's another one of those lovely French ballads, you know.
So, I hope you all enjoy it.
We're going to-- I'm going to have Rob
and Jennifer both do it then we're going to--
so we're going to do it a little bit different today
than we usually do it, we're going to have some fun.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Well, we're just going to quickly do a tune here
for you that-- this is a song,
something called "Voyage au Sainte Genevieve."
And this is kind of a song that has no lyrics, but just--
if you think of-- if you've ever been to the hills
of Southeast Missouri, what brought the French to our part
of the country was lead mining.
And, well, they used to have to pack the lead overland from the mines
in Missouri over the places like Sainte Genevieve, Missouri to put
on the flat boats, take it down in New Orleans.
Well, it was all done on the back of a mule
which we've learned is actually called the Missouri 4x4,
that's what it is.
[Laughter] And, well, this one song is basically what it's like trying
to get to-- down to Sainte Genevieve from the Old Mines area
with some lead on the back of a mule, something called the
"Voyage au Sainte Genevieve."
[ Music and sounds of driving mules]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: All right, we got the mule.
Well, I think we got time to do just two more songs for you.
We'll just do a little bit of this song.
This is one of those tunes that I know that is kind of concurrently
between Quebec and Louisiana, and right in the middle,
which is where we are in the Illinois Country.
And interestingly enough, it's--
I've found many, many different versions of this song.
And I do find it kind of odd sometimes that our version
in the Illinois Country is a piece of the Louisiana version and also
of the Canadian version of the song called "J'ai Fait une Maitresse."
And-- but even beyond that, it's very, very close in its origination
as it came from Normandy and Brittany almost 400 years ago.
So, we'll do a little bit of this tune here for you.
This is another song that I learned from Annie Pashia as well
as Margarette Partel Pollitte [phonetic] who's a great singer
from the Ill-- the Illinois Country as well.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Thank you all very much.
Again, we had a great time here.
I have to tell you, it is such an honor to be here at the Library
of Congress and I cannot even put it in words.
To be honest with you, it kind of-- thank you.
[ Applause ]
It kind of even chokes me up a little bit to think back, well,
almost 22 years ago, hanging out with a lot of these guys
in Old Mines, and women, and most of them aren't around anymore.
Sorry.
[ Pause ]
But I try to be their voice for them.
[ Applause ]
[ Music ]
They put a lot of time and effort in me.
And--
>> Rob Krumm: They'd be proud.
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: Yeah.
And, well, anyway, I'm going to do one more song before I break
up here, so [laughter] get out of here.
But we're going to do a tune here for you that--
Roy Boyer was probably the most influential fiddle player
in the area to me.
And Roy is a great guy, cool barber in anyway.
He taught me a lot of songs
and he didn't even tell me the name of them.
And, he said, "Well, here's a song for you Dennis,
maybe you like this one, you know, record tunes."
So, well, anyway, I decided finally to actually even write a tune kind
of about Roy and what it was like to hang out at the bouillon parties.
And so, I took one of his melodies and added some words to it and kind
of affectionately called it The Boyer Stomp.
And before we go on I want to quickly just introduce everybody
to you up here on the stage.
Please put your hands together for Mr. Rob Krumm,
everybody over here on guitar.
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Back here on upright bass, from Nashville,
Illinois, please put your hands together
for Mr. Jim Willgoose, everybody.
[ Applause ]
And over here, my lovely bride--
>> Jennifer Stroughmatt: There's kind of two of us standing here.
>> Dennis Stroughmatt: There's actually--
there's really kind of two over here right now.
She is five months pregnant actually, so we're hoping
to have even another one.
[Applause] And our daughter, Reagan, is running around here as well.
She's been running around here.
But please put your hands together for Jennifer Stroughmatt, everybody.
[Applause]
>> Jennifer Stroughmatt: Thank you very much.
[Applause] [Music]
>> Rob Krumm: This means a lot for this guy today, how about a hand
for Dennis Stroughmatt, everybody?
[Applause] [Music] All right, all right.
So, I should add, if you like what you hear,
we're playing at the Kennedy Center tonight.
And it's kind of hard to believe,
it's one of these "somebody pinch me" days,
but Kennedy Center tonight.
And then next week, next Wednesday,
we'll be out on the mall everyday starting Wednesday through Sunday.
We're going to play at Smithsonian Folklife Festival next week.
[Applause] So, come and see us.
Yeah, that's going to be great.
And also, at the end, we will have some CDs available.
If you want to come and check out some of our CDs,
we do have three different ones with us.
Thank you all again for coming out today and spending your afternoon
with us, we really appreciate it, we hope we'll see you all later.
[ Music ]
[ Singing in French ]
[ Applause ]
Dennis Stroughmatt: Thank you again, very much.
We appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having us here, thank you all very much again.
Hope we will see you either tonight or next week.
Thank you.
We are l'Esprit Creole.
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