The Metis Fiddle with Trent Freeman and Ry Moran

Nice explanation and demo of why Metis fiddle is its own style and some great playing by this young guy from Comox BC.

Very much part of the North-West, i.e. Riel's Nord-Ouest beyond the Lakes that Canada conquered.  But Metis music was not conquered and thrives across Metis communities... where this kid is from or where he learned to play that may be from family.... he's probbly Metis.

This is hot stuff.  This is also the rockin' fiddle jive that would have been played in the voyaguer camps across the long route by York Boat onde a year to/from Fort  Vancouver, the famous Express (or was famous) carrying the fur company's books and outbound furs for York Factory on Hudson Bay and on to London... or down the the Rainy River from Lake of the Woods to Lake Superior and Fort William, where Port Arthur became established once Northwestern Ontario became a colony of Upper Canada after the taking of force by the OPP Rat Portage, and renaming it Kenora... Riel's vision of Nord-Ouest included Thunder Bay and all of  Lake of  the Woods.....

But the Metis survive and they are not dead, and by no means is their music, which is a constantly evolving style and always fresh and new... I don't know if there's any Canadian Metis fiddlers who have gone down to New Orleans and gotten into zydeco, but that'd get to be an interesting mix/blend/fusion of styles 

I don't have Metis or even true Quebecois blood, my family on the French side is from France via England, though they settled in Quebec hm 1880 maybe dunno. 

 But I feel this music strongly, maybe because it's full of the flavour of the west, one step beyond and wilder still... but still French, and not mort vivan at all, assimilated, least of all musically.

This kid's hot, and I mean his playing, and he's good at explaining it.  I remember long ago - summer 1983  - I was in Williams Lake on a Green Party peregrinage to find members around the province and the very big-C Communist but  totally cool Cariboo Organic Commune had an old roadhouse or bunkhouse with a big room kinda that was a hostel for Williams Lake street people..where they were allowed to drink, but no fighting etc..and stay warm... one old guy in a cowboy hat once he had enough beer to be sloshed picked up a fiddle and started playing this very old Kentucky but also Metis style of slow fiddle... amazing,... also some Metis guys who were from Boston Bar at Seton Beach in Lillooet one night.

They may have conquered the Metis but they didn't conquer their music... it's ver much alive.

And totally cool.

I'm lookin' to get a world-fusion voyageur/zydeco /whatever band going... hmmm could use a good fiddler but this kid's gonna have his own unit soon, he's nobody's sideman if he's that good that young....