Highly respected creole fiddler Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot died on July 29, 1995 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer and diabetes.
Highly respected creole fiddler Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot died on July 29, 1995 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer and diabetes. His family was originally from the Duralde area, where his father worked as a sharecropper and cane cutter.He began playing the fiddle at the age of nine. "So, we took some cigar boxes," he said. "In those days, cigar boxes were made of wood. So, we worked at it and finally made ourselves a fiddle. For our strings, we had no real strings ... we took strands off the screen door. We made fiddles out of that stuff, and then we started practicing." He began playing with his father, Adam Fontenot, at area dances and weddings. He also played second fiddle to Amédé Ardoin, who often played together with his father. Amédé Ardoin and Adam Fontenot are considered the most influential black Creole accordion players of their generation. After his father's death, Fontenot began playing with Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin, an accordionist from nearby Duralde, Louisiana. Fontenot and Ardoin played together for more than 40 years, making recordings and performing across the United States and abroad. Together, and separately, Canray Fontenot and Alphonse "Bois Sec"Ardoin were widely acclaimed. Fontenot's fiddle technique was legendary; his loose, Caribbean-style bowing was extraordinary. Over the course of his life, Fontenot mastered the traditional black Creole repertoire, but also created a new form—his self-titled "blues-waltzes," combining blues tonalities, jazz improvisation, and Cajun modal scales into a music all his own. In 1986, Canray Fontenot was awarded the prestigious National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts for folk music, the nation's highest award for musicians.