STEVE RILEY & THE MAMOU PLAYBOYS
"Dominos"

It's a tricky proposition when you try to create new work in a tradition as strong as Cajun music. If you change too much, the continuity ruptures; if you change too little, the culture calcifies. "The feeling I look for," says Cajun fiddler David Greely, "is when I still feel like I'm a part of something bigger than me, when I feel that the people I learned this music from might like what I'm doing with it." That quote comes from the documentary DVD that accompanies "Dominos," the new CD from Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys. It's an album that accomplishes just what Greely hoped for.

Older songs by Cajun greats such as D.L. Menard and Creole legends such as Amede Ardoin and Canray Fontenot sit comfortably next to new songs by Greely, Riley and Sam Broussard. The distance between past and future shrinks even more when Greely adds new music to an antebellum Creole slave poem, "Marie Mouri/Marie Has Died," or when he adds new lyrics to "Mazurka."

The quintet has matured into one of the finest Cajun bands in history, and Riley leads the way, whether he's playing slippery twin fiddles with Greely on "Marie Mouri" or pumping out infectious button-accordion riffs on the "Ardoin Medley." The sound echoes an earlier era, but the harmonies and improvisations betray modern ambitions and the dance rhythms are often pushed along by electric bass and drums. There are 15 songs on the CD, and three (plus the title tune from the previous album, "Bon Reve") are reprised amid the interviews in Wilson Savoy's DVD documentary short.

     --by Geoffrey Himes