Dennis Stroughmatt

Dennis Stroughmatt, a featured speaker on the Missouri Humanities Council "Program Bureau," and a touring master artist on the Mid-America Arts Alliance Artist Tour and Illinois Artist Tour is an Illinois native who was first introduced to American French culture as a teenager near Old Mines, Missouri. It was there that he spent two and a half intensive years recording, observing, and learning many of the Creole French traditions still alive in "Upper Louisiana." The knowledge that he gained there included a centuries old French Creole fiddling style from fiddlers Roy Boyer and Charlie Pashia, fluency in Illinois-Missouri Creole French, and a wealth of stories and songs from story tellers and singers like Rose Pratte, Annie Pashia, Kent Beaulne, and Eli Robart; all of which have been handed down generation to generation in Missouri and Illinois for nearly 300 years.Dennis went on to live and work in southwest Louisiana as an assistant curator at the Vermilionville Folklife Center in Lafayette, LA and also became fluent in “Lower Louisiana” Creole Music and Cajun/Creole French. There he encountered fiddlers Canray Fontenot, Faren Serrette, and Black Allemand and quickly grasped old-style Cajun and African Creole fiddling with fervor. After earning a Masters Degree of History at Southern Illinois University and eventually a certificate of Quebecois Studies and Language at the University of Quebec, since 1999 Dennis has been a touring French Creole musician and speaker working across the United States, Canada, and Europe. He keeps in constant contact with Creole populations in Missouri and Louisiana and still tours with Louisiana Creole greats Morris Ardoin and Dexter Ardoin when time allows. Dennis can also be seen performing publicly in Old Mines, MO the first sunday of October, every year at the "Fete d'Automne." Not only a musician, Dennis is a preservationist who focuses on creating an understanding of French Creole culture and music, and why cultural diversity is one of the greatest gifts we have in the United States.Dennis is available to perform and offer educational programming for a wide range of settings in English or Creole French. Bilingual programs and performances have been given across the United States at diverse institutions such as Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, North Central College, Shepardstown University, Eastern Illinois Univesity, University of New Orleans, Southeast Missouri State University, Highland College, Coffeyville Community College, The Center for French Colonial Studies, The Missouri Folkore Society, and at the National Collegiate Honors Council conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.Education 1993 BS, Historic Preservation: Southeast Missouri State University 1998 MA, History: Southern Illinois University at Carbondale 1999 Certificate, French Language and Culture: University of Quebec at ChicoutimiBands With Whom Dennis Has Performed Dennis Stroughmatt et L'Esprit Creole (current solo project) Dennis Stroughmatt and Creole Stomp (current full band) Dexter Ardoin and the Creole Ramblers The Morris Ardoin Quartet (current member) Lafayette's Bayou Boys The Lucky Playboys, Marce Lacouture Hadley J. Castille and the Sharecropper Band Joel Sonnier Paul Gregoire and Roux du Bayou Sheryl Cormier and Cajun Sounds The Bayou Teche Band The Acadian Aces The Noisy Gators T-Wayne and the Swamptones The Brown Baggers