Chris Stafford: There’s all kind of different music in Lafayette, but mainly I was exposed to a lot of Cajun music because a lot of my family members listen to Cajun music, and I was interested in it because it was in French, and I was in the French immersion program. I thought it was kind of cool because it was my heritage and culture.
NS: Well, both you and the other Chris, Chris Segura, are fiddle players, too. Chris Segura, what is it about the fiddle that brought you to be playing the instrument and playing this music?
Chris Segura: My great grandpa used to play the fiddle, and my mom, she rented a little violin for me, just to kind of see what it was like, and I was really small. I was four years old when I started taking lessons.
NS: Ashley, I don’t think of Cajun music traditionally, in the old days, as having women, girls in the band. Tell me about your part of this group.
Ashley Hayes: I was raised in Henderson, Louisiana, which is the smallest town in the world. I met Chris at a jam session. I was just starting out, and I was like, ten maybe. I don’t really remember how it exactly happened, but Chris’s mom called me up or something like that and asked me if I wanted to jam with Chris a little bit. I don’t know, I just fell into it.
[music]
NS: Now everyone’s mentioned Cajun and French, do you all speak Cajun French?
Chris Stafford: Yes.
Chris Segura: We went to an immersion program in Nova Scotia at St. Anne’s University. It’s a five week program where you’re just not allowed to speak any English, and if you’re caught three times you’re sent home.
Chris Stafford: Yeah it was really strict, but I mean it was fun, and I learned a whole lot, and I’ve been to that program twice.
AH: When my grandparents were younger, they were not allowed to speak French in schools. They were punished, and French was their first language. So the same way that I’m learning how to speak French, is the same way that they had to do with English. They’re pushing you to preserve the heritage and preserve the French language, and what better way to do that, you know, than carry on what our grandparents used to do whenever they were younger, you know.
[music]
NS: Who would you say are your fans? Are they mostly people like teenage bracket like yourself, or are they older people?
Chris Stafford: Well, it’s kind of weird because whenever we go out of town, like we played at the Merle Fest in North Carolina, and teenagers over there, they loved us, but over here, it’s mostly older people. Adults and older adults, you know, no teenagers really like us. It’s kind of weird.
NS: That must be kind of hard on you socially, to not have teenagers liking you.
AH: They don’t dislike us because we play Cajun music, they just don’t choose to listen to Cajun Music.
Chris Stafford: You know it is their heritage, I mean I kind of wish more kids would be into their heritage.
NS: If they’re not listening to Cajun music, what are they into?
AH: Rock, whatever.
Chris Stafford: Rock, rap, pop, whatever.
Chris Segura: Whatever’s on the radio, that kind of stuff.
NS: Well what do you think of rock and pop and rap and all those things?
AH: I love it.
Chris Stafford: I like rock.
Chris Segura: I like rock.
NS: So I mean would this band ever become a rock band?
AH: No.
Chris Segura: I don’t think so.
NS: Music and conversation from the Cajun Band Feufollet. The band is all grown up now, but we spoke to them in 2002 when they were just teenagers. And we remember multi-instrumentalist Chris Stafford, who we lost in a car crash in Lafayette, Louisiana, in May 2024. He was 36 years old. A devastating loss to family, friends and the music scene in Lafayette.
To hear the full program, tune in Saturdays at 5 and Sundays at 6 on WWNO, or listen at americanroutes.org.