The Arhoolie Foundation celebrates American Roots Music
For over 25 years, the Arhoolie Foundation has been building on the work of founder Chris Strachwitz and his seminal independent record label Arhoolie Records. We are dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and celebration of regional roots music and its makers. Through films, digital audio preservation, exhibitions, and our extensive archival website, we work to broaden public awareness of our diverse music history and support for living music and cultural traditions.
For over 60 years, Arhoolie has recorded great music in Louisiana, Texas, California, and beyond. Visit the rest of our website for archival interviews, photographs, videos, posters, rare catalogs, and more. Here are a few examples of what you will find:
Zydeco & Creole music
Clifton Chenier Interviews
Chris Strachwitz not only recorded classic albums with Clifton, but he also interviewed him about his life and music. Listen to Clifton talk in 1971 and 1978. The interview section also includes a rich gallery of photos.
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Canray Fontenot
Come inside the home of legendary Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot and watch him play with Michael Doucet in 1993. An intimate look at two legends of the fiddle.
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CAJUN MUSIC
Ann Savoy Interview Collection
The collection consists of dozens of recorded interviews that musician and documentarian Ann Savoy has conducted with Louisiana musicians over the past 45 years. Among the interviewees are some of the most significant figures in the history of Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco music.
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KEUN – EUNICE, LOUISANA
In 1962, Chris Strachwitz journeyed from California to Texas and all through the South. While driving from New Orleans back towards Texas, he heard a Cajun radio show on KEUN-AM and drove to Eunice to check it out. Listen to an interview with Strachwitz talking about that early visit to Eunice and see the photos he took there.
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DEEP DIVE — Cajun Culture
Check out our recent Deep Dive on Cajun culture, produced in collaboration with Valcour Records and The Coop, a digital storytelling project about Louisiana music and food. With rare photographs, audio inverviews, and videos from the Chris Strachwitz Collection, the Cajun culture Deep Dive showcases Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie’s long history of documenting and sharing the Cajun music of Southwest Louisiana. Other recent Deep Dives have focused on Sacred Steel gospel, Los Pinguinos del Norte, and other aspects of Arhoolie history.
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Dances/Concerts/Record Labels
Vintage Posters
The Chris Strachwitz Collection is full of unique concert posters from Louisiana and beyond. The walls at the Arhoolie Foundation are covered with these rare posters, and we have digitized and shared many of them on our website. These posters feature some of the great names of American roots music.
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Arhoolie Occasional
The short-lived Arhoolie Occassional was both an insider’s guide to the record business and a travelogue into the lives and music of Arhoolie’s signature artists. From colorful profiles of Mance Lipscomb and John Jackson to a guide entitled “How to Hire Blues Artists,” the Occasional packed enough information in its pages to keep even the most diehard Arhoolie fan busy.
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