Chris Stafford, a major creative force in the Lafayette music community, passed away on May 2, 2024. Stafford’s untimely death at age thirty-six has left a vast void in a city where the bar for proficiency is set very high, and where his in-demand presence on the music scene was virtually ubiquitous. Stafford’s passing has also been deeply mourned among the worldwide circle of Louisiana music admirers. 

Stafford was perhaps best known, in the public eye, for his work with the band Feufollet as a skilled multi-instrumentalist who was equally adept at playing fiddle, guitar, accordion, keyboards, and pedal steel. Such skills were especially evident in the context of Cajun music and zydeco—with Feufollet as well as other groups—in which Stafford reprised the classic older forms while also creating fresh, innovative, and sometimes startling new interpretations. He also applied this skill to a wide variety of other genres—including country, rock, pop, punk, funk, and the amorphous amalgam known as Americana—both as a soloist and as an intuitive, simpatico accompanist.  

Beyond such instrumental prowess Stafford also shone as an adventurous bandleader, a wise and inspiring teacher, a highly skilled record producer, a keen-eared audio engineer, a soulful vocalist, an inventive songwriter, and a member of several stylistically diverse bands. It is no exaggeration to describe Stafford as a Renaissance man. An anthology of his eclectic work, in all of the above-mentioned roles, can be heard on the highly recommended Spotify playlist Toujours en Mouvement: the Music of Chris Stafford, compiled by his friend, bandmate, and frequent collaborator Philippe Billeaudeaux. 

Stafford’s reverence for French Louisiana tradition drew in part on the legacy of his ancestors, Jesse and Samuel Stafford, who made musical field recordings for the Library of Congress folklorists John and Alan Lomax in 1934. The Lomaxes documented more than fifty varied Louisiana musicians who cumulatively preserved a rich folkloric repertoire that was then on the verge of extinction as mainstream-culture radio broadcasts permeated the state. This treasure trove of recordings languished for decades until copies reached Louisiana in the 1980s. The experts who heard them—including the fiddler Michael Doucet and Barry Ancelet, the Cajun folklorist who co-founded Festivals Acadiens et Créoles—were astounded to learn of a far broader scope of Cajun and Creole music than was previously known to exist. After some of the recordings were released commercially in 1987, certain songs were revived—including Jesse Stafford’s “Je m’endors,” recorded anew by Feufollet in 2004—enriching the contemporary Cajun-Creole repertoire. Today such numbers are regularly performed by many of Stafford’s colleagues, including Joel and Wilson Savoy, Michael Doucet, David Greely, and past/present Feufollet members Anna-Laura Edmiston and Kelli Jones.  

Though Stafford passed away in May of 2024, his legacy looms large in his home of Lafayette and far beyond. Photo by Joseph Vidrine, courtesy of the Stafford Foundation

Stafford advocated for South Louisiana’s French dialects as living languages, in song and daily conversation alike. He was a stickler for linguistic accuracy. “If you’re just going to be singing in French gibberish,” Stafford told the Oxford American in 2015, “you might as well make up your own language. You’re not saying anything at that point.” Stafford embarked on his heritage-conscious path as a schoolboy in Lafayette Parish’s French immersion program, while also developing as a child-prodigy musician. At age eight he began learning from the master accordion player and multi-instrumentalist Steve Riley, who in turn had learned from the master fiddler Dewey Balfa. At age eleven Stafford co-founded the band Feufollet with his brother Mike on drums and Chris Segura on fiddle, among others. As tweens, the group depended on proud, devoted parents to carpool them to rehearsals, recording sessions, and increasingly far-afield performances. Feufollet’s youth belied the band’s burgeoning emergence as credible peers in the adult professional arena. Barry Ancelet succinctly observed, in an email to this writer, “They were very good, early on.” 

Beginning in 1999, Feufollet crafted six full albums covering a broad range of material. Cajun and zydeco tunes and other songs in French were prominently featured, and sometimes reinvented, on songs such as “Femme L’a Dit” and “Sur Le Bord De L’eau.” One album, En Couleurs, released in 2010, with all songs in French, was nominated for a Grammy Award and received praise from prominent musicians including Elvis Costello. The following year—to the disapproval of some Francophone purists—Feufollet released three songs in English on The Color Sessions, a collaborative project with the band Brass Bed, which reciprocated by recording three songs in French. In 2015 Feufollet released a full bilingual album pointedly entitled Two Universes.  

Stafford dismissed the popular notion that he was a Cajun cultural crusader, telling the Oxford American that one of his biggest influences was “probably The Beatles” and adding, “We’ll see if people get upset about our singing in English . . . We’ve done the cultural preservation thing for a very really long time, and right now we just want to be songwriters and musicians and make art first and foremost.” Barry Ancelet offered this wise perspective to The Current in June 2024: “What if we say it, not in terms of pushing boundaries, but opening doors?. . . [Chris] was saying ‘go check this out. This house [has] more than one room.”  

One highlight of 2024’s Festivals Acadiens et Créoles was the set “Feufollet & Friends Honor Chris Stafford.” More than a dozen musicians participated, many of whom wept onstage during the set. Despite Stafford’s conspicuous absence, the band’s legacy was emphasized by strong performance by such up-and-coming musicians as Stafford’s sibling Elise Riley, on both drums and accordion. (Feufollet will still reunite for special occasions but is no longer an active entity.) In addition, the festival presented the panel-discussion tribute “The Life and Career of Chris Stafford” at the Scène Atelier tent.  

To honor and disseminate his rich legacy and continue sharing its impact, the recently established Christopher Stafford Memorial Foundation will “elevate artists’ access to music and music education, fostering inclusivity . . . We strive to offer aspiring young musicians and professionals the platform to pursue their creative passions,” including practical hands-on training in the craft of recording. Another important raison d’être is “promoting the French language and culture, especially the proper use of the language in music.” The Foundation notes, “We are actively advocating to create, along with other organizations, an Acadiana Music Legends Park that will honor not only Chris, but many other musicians who have passed on before him.” 

For further information visit staffordfoundation.org or cfacadiana.org/christopherstafford. 

Ben Sandmel, a New Orleans–based drummer and folklorist, has an M.A. in musicology from Tulane University. He played on and produced The Hackberry Ramblers’ Grammy-nominated Deep Water and wrote Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans. In 2018 LEH honored Sandmel with a Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities Award. 

Listen Up is funded in part by a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.