Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections, 2015.196.864c, Connecticut Historical S…

Interviews with Ilias Kemenzides and Rosaire Lehoux, Michel Grenier, & Camille Richard

IntervieweeInterview with Ilias Kementzides Greek, 1926 - 2006

TranslatorInterview translated by Maria Kementzides

IntervieweeInterview with Rosaire Lehoux Canadian, 1920 - 2013

IntervieweeInterview with Michel Grenier

IntervieweeInterview with Camille Richard

InterviewerInterviewed by Rebecca Joseph

Date1991 May 28

Mediumreformatted digital file from audio cassette

DimensionsDuration (side 1): 47 Minutes, 32 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 3 Minutes, 31 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 51 Minutes, 8 Seconds

ClassificationsInformation Artifacts

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

DescriptionAudio cassette tape recording of two interviews recorded for the first Living Legends exhibit project.

The first interview was with Ilias Kemenzides at his home. Maria Kementzides was the translater. Ilias Kemenzides was interviewed by Becky Joseph on May 28, 1991. Ilias plays the lyra during the interview.

The second interview was with French Canadian musicians Rosaire Lehoux, Michel Grenier, and Camille Richard. They were interviewed by Becky Joseph on May 28, 1991.

Object number2015.196.864a-d

CopyrightIn Copyright

NotesSubject Note: Living Legends: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists was a multi-year project to showcase the excellence and diversity of folk artists living and practicing traditional arts throughout the state. The first CCHAP Director, Rebecca Joseph, developed the first exhibition in 1991, displaying photographic portraits along with art works and performances representing 15 artists from different communities, at the Institute for Community Gallery at 999 Asylum Avenue in Hartford.

Subject Note: The French Canadian and Franco-American communities in Connecticut consist of descendants of immigrants from French-speaking areas of Canada and Northern New England who came south to find work in the factories and textile mills of the state's industrial valley towns. These groups continue to celebrate their heritage in neighborhood churches and the many French social clubs across the state, gathering regularly to observe religious, seasonal, and occupational events such as maple sugaring. At the Franco-American Civic and Social Club in Windham in eastern Connecticut the maple sugar "home party" in late March featured a ham dinner and maple sugar cake, along with “sugar on snow” and meat pies/tortiere, accompanied by fiddle music, French songs, and quadrille dancing. For many years in the 1980s-2000s, longtime friends, fiddler Rosaire Lehoux and guitarists Camille Richard and Michel Grenier played music for these gatherings all over southern New England, performing with their group “Michel Grenier et ses Joyeux Copains.” CCHAP Director Becky Joseph interviewed them and involved them in the first Living Legends project in 1991-1993.

Traditional Franco-American music features the fiddle, the accordion, sometimes piano, and voice, particularly in chansons a répondre (call and response songs). Distinct French Canadian fiddle traditions arose in Quebec and the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with the latter "Acadian" style particularly influencing fiddlers in nearby Maine (and some who moved from Maine to Connecticut), while Quebecois repertoire and style came to New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut. The quadrille, a New England French social dance accompanied by fiddlers, brings four couples into a set with a caller leading the steps and changes as in square dance. Michel, Rosaire, and Camille were recorded in the studios of WNPR in 1996, and two of these recordings appear on the WNPR/CCHAP-produced CD “Sounds Like Home: Connecticut Traditional Musicians.”

Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for these artists and this project.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.