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MULTI-INSTRUMENTALISTS Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc and Pascal Miousse — Vishten — have been dazzling audiences with a fierylend of traditional French songs and original instrumentation for over a decade.
The name Vishten is a nod to the eponymous song whose lyrics are a percussive amalgam of French, Mi’kmaq and English, a musical realisation of the band’s fascinating Acadian heritage.
For millennia Acadia, a region in north-eastern North America, was occupied by the Mi’kmaq people. It was colonised by the French in 1604, hence the strong Francophone influence in the songs, while subsequent settlers from Ireland and Scotland left their Celtic stamp on the music
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