Lou Carrig

Lou Carrig is a musician, ethnomusicologist, and community-based artist whose work centers on traditional music as a living practice. Rooted in long-term study, performance, and research, her work explores how song, land, plants, craft and culture are intertwined.

Raised in the northeastern United States in an Irish immigrant family, Carrig grew up deeply aware of cultural displacement, lineage, and the quiet loss of language and tradition that often accompanies migration. That early experience of separation from ancestral cultural continuity shaped her lifelong interest in how cultures transmit meaning through music. From an early age she gravitated toward music as both a personal calling and a way of understanding the world, eventually pursuing formal training in performance and ethnomusicology.

She earned a degree in Music Performance from the University of New Orleans, studying accordion and choral conducting, and has since built a multifaceted career as a performer, researcher, educator, and organizer. Her musical foundation is broad, spanning folk, classical, and contemporary traditions, but her deepest and most sustained work has been with the vocal and instrumental traditions of Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria, where she has spent many years studying, performing, and conducting field research.

Carrig’s engagement with Balkan music began in the early 2010s and deepened through long-term study, mentorship, and immersion. She has studied with numerous tradition bearers and master musicians from across Bulgaria, and has returned repeatedly to the region for extended periods of learning. Her work has included years of relationship-building with musicians in rural communities, particularly in the Western Rhodope mountains, where she developed close ties with singers maintaining highly localized polyphonic traditions. Through these relationships, she gained rare access to living repertoires, archival recordings, and embodied knowledge passed down through generations.

As a Fulbright Scholar in Bulgaria (2023–2024), Carrig undertook an in-depth research project examining the intersections of folk song, ritual, seasonal calendars, and traditional plant knowledge. Her work focused on how music functions within a broader cosmology — how songs encode relationships between people, land, agriculture, healing practices, and spiritual life. Her research bridged ethnomusicology and ethnobotany, tracing how musical traditions are inseparable from ecological knowledge and everyday practices. She conducted archival research and interviews, while also studying ethnomusicology and folk vocal production at the Academy of Music, Dance, and Fine Arts in Plovdiv. 

A significant portion of her research centered on Dolen, a small village in the Western Rhodopes whose unique polyphonic singing tradition, na visoko peene,  was recently recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Through sustained relationships with local singers, she was able to study rare archival recordings alongside living practitioners, creating a rare continuity between historical documentation and contemporary practice. This work has informed her broader understanding of how traditional knowledge survives, adapts, and persists through embodied transmission rather than written record.

In New Orleans, Carrig is the founder and director of Trendafilka, a vocal ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of traditional polyphonic music from Eastern Europe. The group approaches this repertoire with deep respect for its cultural contexts while presenting it through a contemporary lens. Trendafilka functions not only as a performance ensemble but as a space for collective learning, listening, and community engagement. Under Carrig’s direction, the group has become a touchstone for audiences seeking meaningful encounters with traditional music.

She is also the founder of Community Polyphony, an open, non-auditioned community choir that invites people of all backgrounds to experience communal singing as a social and cultural practice. Grounded in the belief that polyphony is a shared birthright, the project emphasizes participation over performance and reconnects people with the embodied experience of singing together — an experience largely absent from modern life.

In addition to her work in traditional music, Carrig is an accomplished accordionist with a wide-ranging performance career. She has performed with ensembles including Blato Zlato and Panorama Jazz Band, and has appeared as a guest soloist with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, New Resonance Orchestra, performing for live productions by Marigny Opera Ballet company and Mélange Dance Company.

Throughout her career, Carrig has maintained a strong commitment to community-based arts practice and cultural continuity. She currently works in arts administration and cultural exchange at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and has long been involved in organizing, teaching, and mentoring within traditional music communities. Her work bridges scholarship and practice, honoring tradition while situating it within contemporary life.