Community/Traditional Arts

Don Roy plays Acadian music at the Library of Congress


	Don Roy performing at the Blaine House Conference on Maine's Creative Economy. Photo by Robert Darby.

When you listen to the music from Don Roy's fiddle, you can hear galloping horses' hooves and echoes of generations of Acadian fiddlers. The galloping rhythm and respect for the past are part of what identify the French Canadian and Acadian tunes which are played in Maine.

On May 18, Roy played at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. with Acadian singer Florence Martin. Their noontime performance was part of the Homegrown: Music of America series which is sponsored by the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center.

Toe-tappers from across the country heard something familiar in Roy's music. It is related to the same Acadian tradition that finds its southern expression in Cajun music.

While his playing is Acadian at heart, Roy says he has been influenced by a wide range of fiddling.

"I've dabbled in all of them; bluegrass bands, Irish tunes, Cape Breton stuff," says Roy. "But when I go back to the French Canadian stuff - the tunes that I learned as a kid - you can hear reflections of the people I learned the tunes from."

As a boy, Roy spent school vacations and fishing trips with his Uncle Lucien Mathieu, whose father had immigrated to Maine from Canada. As a kid, Roy says, he liked the fiddle because "Uncle Lucien played it." One day when Roy was 15, Lucien let him take a fiddle home with him.

"Weekends we'd get together in the Winslow area, with all my mother's brothers and sisters, and they'd have a party every weekend," says Roy. "They all either sang or played the fiddle."

Roy learns most of his tunes by ear, although he occasionally thumbs through collections of fiddle tunes. In keeping with Acadian tradition, Roy has been passing along his fiddling heritage to a few private students, as well as a larger workshop at the Center for Cultural Exchange, in Portland, Maine. In 2003, he and an apprentice won a Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grant from the Maine Arts Commission.

Ethnomusicologist Bau Graves calls Roy the finest Franco fiddler in New England, whose playing, "exactly exemplifies what Franco American fiddling is all about. It is simultaneously precisely controlled and wildly danceable."

Roy currently performs Franco and Celtic tunes with the band Fiddlebox. He says one of the things he likes most about the music is the positive atmosphere it generates.

"Music," he says, "is a reason to get together and feel good about life."