Saute Crapaud and Cajun Jigs

Hi, I'm Mitch Reed, and welcome to my vlog. It is the 1st of March, and I am thinking about St. Patrick's Day already. And I thought this would be fun to maybe play one of the few Cajun jigs that we have. A jig is a type of dance tune that's in six-eight. we have one in Cajun music and it's called Saute Crapaud. So I'm going to play it for you. So this is my Irish Cajun celebration song. Okay, here we go. [0:33]

So this is a fun little tune that's kind of a rare tune. It's not really played at jams or anything, but definitely a serious traditional tune. And I used to play with a couple of old guys who played it on accordion. And there are words that go along with it. It's all about a frog; Leap, frog- your tail's on fire. And there's a bunch of other verses some for kids, some not for kids. So, yeah. So anyway, we're not going to worry about the words, we're just going to learn the tune. So there are two parts. There's an A part and a B part. And I have my fiddle with the tape. So I'm going to lower the camera. You can see the fiddle and the tape and position myself to where I'm going to teach you this tune. We're going to break it down. So we're going to start with the A part and it has two phrases. I'm tuned down to Cajun tuning. So it's in the key of C. We're going to start on the E string. I'm going to call the strings by their regular names. And this is the very first phrase. It goes like this. [02:21]

I'm going to walk through that, do your best. If you can see my fingers and where they're going. So I'm starting like I said, on the E string [02:36].

Alright so that's our first phrase, I'll play it maybe a little bit more rhythmic.[02:53]

All right. Now we'll go on to the second phrase of the A part. And again, it starts on the E string. It starts on a low, second finger on the E string. [03:09]

I'll play that a little slower. [03:18]

All right. So that is, we have the, A part. Okay. So let's try the A part slow together and we're going to play that a couple of times through, so here we go [03:38].

Okay. So we have our A part. Now let's go to our B part and our B part goes like this [04:18].

So that's our very first phrase of the B part. So we're going to start with open A [04:31]. Then it goes through a second finger on the D [04:35], back to an open A [04:37], back to an open D [04:40], back to an open A [04:45]. All right. So let's play that slowly. So here we go [04:52].

All right. We'll do that again [05:03].

So the B part [05:15]. I don't know what I'm doing now. [05:25]

I just remember the second phrase of the B part [05:43]. Let's walk through. This is the second phrase of the B part. [05:57] Do that again. [06:10]

So we have the whole B part. Those two phrases make up the B part. Let's play the B part a couple of times. So here we go. [06:29]. Back to the A part now [06:54], B part [07:17].

All right, Saute Crapaud. If you want to add some open strings to it that would work as well. So when I'm on the E I'm going to catch the open A. When I'm on A, let's see... [08:39]

On the A string, I catch the open D so then you get this kind of thing. You give it a Cajun sound, but it's still an Irish jig. [08:52]

All right. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all you Cajun Irish people or whatever you are. It doesn't matter. And just enjoy fiddling. And thanks for joining me on my vlog and hope to see you soon. Thanks so much.