For a farmer, the accordion was a prized and costly possession, and the children weren't allowed to touch it. Cormier said, "I wanted to play his forbidden musical instrument. She started playing music when she was 7 years old after taking her father's accordion. Personal life Ĭormier was born as Sheryl Guidreau on Main Grand Coteau, Louisiana. In 1997, she was placed in the Cajun Music Hall of Fame. Cormier was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1993. Her song "Mon Coeur et Mon Armour" won Best Song at the Cajun French Music Awards in 1989 and her band won Best Upcoming Band. In 1988, she was voted as Female Vocalist of the Year by The Times of Acadiana and she was given the title of Best Contemporary Artist. She has been named the Cajun Queen in the United States and Europe. Ĭormier is "one of the few women to establish herself in Cajun music" and she is the first professional female Cajun accordion musician. In 2005, Cormier and her husband traveled to England for a performance at the Gloucester International Music Festival and throughout Europe. Cormier had a heart attack in 2004 that kept her from performing for close to a year. Her band, The Cajun Sound, includes her husband and son among others. The Arcadian Museum named her a Living Legend in 2002, and that year it was reported that Cormier released 45 recordings and performed in every major Cajun music festival. Throughout the 1990s, Cormier performed in Europe. In 1992, she released her second album titled Sheryl Cormier and Cajun Sounds. The group recorded the album "Queen of Cajun Music" ("La Reine de Musique Cadjine"). She started her own group in 1990 which included her husband Russell singing and her son Russell Jr. She is "one of the few women to establish herself in Cajun music" and is the first professional Cajun accordion female musician.Ĭormier was a hair stylist before she became a professional musician. She began playing the accordion when she was 7 years old. The Savoy family of musicians, producers, writers, and educators are living proof.Sheryl Cormier (born March 15, 1945) is an American Cajun accordion musician. He forcefully asserts that Cajun and Creole music is the ‘glue’ that will hold French Louisiana culture and communities together into the future. A master accordion-maker and Cajun music virtuoso, Savoy engages the complex evolution in Cajun culture from a lived point of view-family, touring, and running a small, but influential business from Eunice, Louisiana. “Marc Savoy, in his own inimitable way as a crusty, creative perfectionist, has given us a book that is at once a history of the accordion globally as well as in French Louisiana in his and his ancestors’ lives. With his legendary years of experience-a passion for music preservation and building fine accordions-Marc Savoy takes us on a memorable journey to a unique place in America by seamlessly weaving history, music, and tradition into one fascinating and enjoyable read.” Made in Louisiana delves into the world of Cajun culture and the one-row diatonic squeezebox. Today, he is revered as one of the finest builders and players of the instrument in the world. In 1966, he opened the doors to the iconic Savoy Music Center in his hometown. By age twenty, he was building and selling his own Acadian-brand Cajun accordions. Told in Marc’s own words, Made in Louisiana is the story of the evolution of his Acadian brand accordions-but it is also the story of how an instrument once known as the “German-style” accordion became the iconic image of Louisiana’s Cajun culture.īorn in 1940, Marc Savoy grew up in a rural French-speaking community outside of Eunice, Louisiana, and started playing the accordion at age twelve. Upon seeing a Louisiana-handmade diatonic accordion for the first time in 1957, a teenage Marc Savoy began a quest that arguably no one has come closer to achieving: to build the perfect Cajun accordion.
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