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The use of French and Creole in Louisiana has been on the decline for decades, although a number of initiatives and organizations are attempting to slow the slide and preserve the state’s unique cultural history. But there’s one area where the state’s heritage languages can still be regularly heard: Louisiana music.
“As we have this ongoing language loss in Louisiana, why is it in music that Louisiana keeps perpetuating the French language? And how are musicians doing that today?” says Scott Tilton, the co-founder and co-director of the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures, also called the Nous Foundation.
Those were guiding questions for the Nous Foundation’s “Musique(s)!” project, an initiative using a music album, a short documentary film, a book and an exhibition to explore what Louisiana French and Creole music sounds like in 2025. The organization, which Tilton and his husband Rudy Bazenet founded in 2021, takes a modern, arts-focused approach to help make Louisiana French and Creole more accessible to New Orleanians.
Released on May 7, “Musique(s)! L’Album” is a full-length album featuring songs in French and Creole by Grammy winners Louis Michot and Leyla McCalla, indie pop band Sweet Crude, roots musician Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes and his band The Louisiana Sunspots, contemporary string ensemble Les Cenelles and a unique group of Baby Dolls. The album is out now on vinyl through the Nous Foundation and will be available on streaming services.
The larger “Musique(s)!” project earned the Nous Foundation a Community Collections Grant from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And in March, the organization went to Washington, D.C., to present the project at the Library of Congress with a performance by Michot and McCalla. The book, album and film will be archived in the Library of Congress’ permanent collections.
The Community Collections Grant program supports projects that document an aspect of a community’s culture, Tilton says, so when Nous was brainstorming what kind of project they could propose, they wanted to find something that would bring people together.
“I think there were two things. One was food, and the other was music,” he says.
Recorded at Esplanade Studios, the album features each musician and ensemble performing two songs. Michot, the fiddler and vocalist for Lost Bayou Ramblers, and folk musician Leyla McCalla formed an informal duo for their set of recordings, swapping accompaniment on tracks like “Valse de Meche Perdu,” a song written by Michot’s father, Tommy, and “Lavi Vye Neg,” a Haitian kreyol song McCalla included on her album “The Capitalist Blues.”
Sunpie & The Louisiana Sunspots inject zydeco on their songs “Sang Brule” and “Marie Laveau,” which also carries some Latin influences. And the ensemble Les Cenelles use violin, bass, cello and voice on the lovely Creole songs “Michie Banjo” and “Michie Prevale.”
Sweet Crude have always used Louisiana French in their indie rock and pop music, and on “Musique(s)!” the band revisits their songs “Mon Esprit” and “Prokupine.” Vocalist Sam Craft also mixed the album and New Orleans producer and musician Ben Lorio mastered it.
Notably, “Musique(s)!” includes two songs in Louisiana Creole performed by a group of Baby Dolls. Their recordings of “Mo Lemme Toi” and “Eh La Bas” overlap with a project led by scholar Kim Vaz-Deville seeking to reconnect the playful Baby Doll tradition with the Creole songs New Orleans women would sing when the tradition began.
The recording process was filmed, and the musicians sat for interviews, which was used to make the 20-minute “Musique(s)!” documentary. The short film premiered earlier this year at the New Orleans French Film Festival.
Those interviews also are part of a 120-page book along with photos and lyrics to each song. The album and book — both designed by artistic directors Katya Vaz and Autumn Palen — are available at the Nous Foundation’s recently opened space at 602 Toulouse St.
“You can listen to a song a million times, but when you start digging into the roots you realize how many different places it’s coming from,” Tilton says. “The amount of influences that converge here [is interesting] and how for each musician, it’s not just one tradition they’re pulling from, often it’s three or four traditions. The Mississippi sometimes feels like a giant sound wave emanating into the Gulf.”
Find more information at nous-foundation.org.
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