ONLINE: Cedric Watson

press release: The Sugar Maple Music Festival, with the help of a grant from Dane Arts, is pleased to announce another session in the Virtual Roots & Reasons Series. 

One of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole and Zydeco music over the last decade, Cedric Watson is a four-time Grammy-nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist & songwriter with seemingly unlimited potential.

Friday, March 12, 2021, 5:30 pm CST, Streaming live on Facebook

Originally from San Felipe, Texas, Cedric made his first appearance at the age of 19 at the Zydeco Jam at The Big Easy in Houston. Just two years later, he moved to south Louisiana, quickly immersing himself in French music and language. Over the next several years, Cedric performed French music in 17 countries and on 7 full-length albums with various groups, including the Pine Leaf Boys, Corey Ledet, Les Amis Creole with Ed Poullard and J.B. Adams, and with his own group, Bijou Creole.

With an apparently bottomless repertoire of songs at his fingertips, Cedric plays everything from forgotten Creole melodies and obscure Dennis McGee reels to more modern Cajun and Zydeco songs, even occasionally throwing in a bluegrass fiddle tune or an old string band number. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he is also a prolific songwriter, writing almost all of his songs on his double row Hohner accordion. Cedric’s songs channel his diverse ancestry (African, French, Native American and Spanish) to create his own brand of sounds.

Cedric’s albums are a tapestry of pulsing rhythms and Creole poetry, and his live performances are unforgettable, all at once progressive and nostalgic.

“To propel our Louisiana culture into the future seems to be quite a task, but if one lives for the music as Cedric does, the path seems effortless. These songs may well be early brushstrokes of a life’s worth of possibilities, not only for himself, but also for the identity survival of a culture.” -Michael Doucet