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Mic Mac from Nova Scotia, Canada
Lee Cremo

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The trip out to the end of Nova Scotia, Canada is one of the loveliest drives we have found on our journeys. We immediately fall in love with the land. We drive to a little village called Eskasoni to meet a Micmac native named Lee Cremo.

In beginning the second series of Oyate Ta Olowan, we decided to include some artists that would be called transitional or contemporary-not just traditional native music. Lee Cremo was one of these. I speak in past tense because after we recorded him in 1998, he passed away. Now, we offer this show as a memorial piece for a great musician.

Lee was a fiddler. When we met him he was recovering from a broken arm and still didn't have full flexibility. We were stunned to hear him play even with his slight disability.

The man was a magnificent fiddler and composer. In fact, we discovered, to Milt's delight, that Lee was the composer of the famous fiddle tune called "Constitutional Breakdown."

Nova Scotia was a settling place for the Scottish immigrants-in fact it means New Scotland. Lee took up the fiddle one day while all the people were at church-music was banned on Sundays. He jokingly told us that he could hardly hold the thing, "My head was bent backwards so far, like, you know, I could smell my bum. He never put it down again.

Lee was a charmer, flirty and humorous, and we enjoyed his company. After we finished recording he sliced thick slabs of bologna and fried them and made sandwiches for us and then sent us sent us down the road fed and happy.