Wendy Barnes Design's Reusable Straw Case, featuring a drill animal pattern Reusable straws have been big the last year or so at the biannual NY NOW home/lifestyle/handmade/gift market trade shows, which until last year was held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York (it’s set to return there for this summer’s in-person show, Aug. 8-11). With the second pandemic-driven digital NY NOW show now underway (the first was last October), there are some new offerings in the reusable

1. Terrance Simien and his Krewe De Monifique, Ancestral Grooves (Music Matters Records): Hate to fall back on calling Simien’s respectful homage “a spicey musical gumbo” but that’s exactly what it is, what with Louisiana-honoring tunes like the closing “Tribute to Art, Allen and Mac” (Art Neville, Allen Toussaint and Mac Rebbenack) and key collaborators James Andrews and Keith Frank, not to mention daughter Marcella, who vocally holds her own with the respective brass band t

Michael Doucet featurette that served as his APAP 2021 virtual showcase What a difference a year makes. Last January, Michael Doucet and his Grammy-winning Cajun band BeauSoleil received the Folk Alliance International Lifetime Achievement Award in the “Living” artist category, opposite fellow Louisiana native Mahalia Jackson in the “Legacy” heading. “That’s pretty good company!” says Doucet, who hails from the Lafayette, La. suburb of Scott. But this January, due to the pand

When Ann Allen Savoy announced late last year that she had finally finished Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People--Volume II, calling it “long-awaited” was hardly marketing hype. The first volume, Cajun Music A Reflection of a People—Volume I, was published in 1984. “I started ‘Book Two’ in 1985, and it was already massive when I put it all in a big box and thought, ‘Maybe my children will complete this,’” says Savoy, on the phone from her rural Eunice, La. farmhouse. “All th