Zydeco artist in Disney film

• By STEVEN K. LANDRY
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Oct 26, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

LAFAYETTE
Ladies and gentlemen and Cajun boys and girls, now playing the caterpillar: Grammy-winning zydeco artist Terrance Simien!
Yes … the caterpillar. But don’t call PETA yet.

By Christmas, in theaters, Simien will be playing a cartoon character — a firefly sporting a beret — who sings and also commandeers a squeezable cartoon caterpillar, which will act as his regular instrument of choice in Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog.”

“It’s the first time our type of music will be featured in a Disney film,” Simien, 44, said this month.

He’ll be flying to Los Angeles on Nov. 7 to play the wrap party for the film, which is set in French Quarter New Orleans and features a black princess as the main character.

Simien’s got one speaking line. In the film, his firefly flutters out of the swamp playing “Goin’ Down the Bayou,” a new tune Simien wrote with Grammy-winning songwriter and piano-playing rock legend Randy Newman, of “Rednecks,” “Short People” and previous Disney-score fame.

“It was wild the way they did it,” Simien said of the New York sessions, “because while we were in the studio with Randy, the illustrators were drawing how we played, how we moved, how we looked. I’ve never been in a situation like that.”

The film is scored by Newman and will also feature Dr. John and Terence Blanchard, plus the voices of Oprah Winfrey, John Goodman and Terence Howard.

Normally, Simien’s supple-but-strong vibrato is backed by his accordion, and has been for three-plus decades since he grew up in the Mallet community between Opelousas and Eunice in St. Landry Parish.

Several albums and hundreds of gigs later, in 2007, with invaluable help from his wife, Cynthia, he won the first Cajun-Zydeco Grammy.

The category had long been absent but found its way to the hallowed awards show after Cynthia Simien’s tireless efforts. Before that, people such as King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier and Michael Doucet avec BeauSoleil had to settle for wins in the Folk category.

Simien won for “2008 Live Worldwide!” as Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience. Since then, he’s carried his Grammy everywhere he goes — literally.

“It’s with me right now,” Simien said from a hotel room in Houston, where they were set to play a few hours later. “We bring it to every show. I’m serious. We’ve been having fun with our Grammy and everybody wants to take a picture with it. I have a special case for it.

They ship it to you in a box, because you don’t get it right away, but a couple months later. The ones they use on the show are just for show, for everybody.”