Creole Formation

Welcome to the site of the Stanford Linguistics Department's "other" band, Creole Formation.

Group Picture Picture of Woodwinds Picture of Keyboards

Personnel

Stacy Lewis, flute
Lauren Hall-Lew, clarinet, tenor sax
Doug Ball, keyboards, music director

and

Jefferson Shirley, photographer, sometimes roadie, and altogether good guy

What We're About

Mostly we're just some linguistics grad students who get together and fend off the stress of being in grad school by playing some music.

However, the name Creole Formation was selected because we seek to combine the best of music's acrolects, mesolects, and basilects (jazz, classical, and rock, however you'd like to view them) to form a new, interesting mix of music.

What We Play

Genre	Examples
Classical	"The Whale" from the soundtrack to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (J. Talbot, transcribed by D. Ball)
	"Prelude No. 2" (G. Gershwin)
	"Fugue No. 2" from Book 1, Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (J.S. Bach)
Post-Swing Jazz	"Speak No Evil" (W. Shorter)
	"Take Five" (P. Desmond)
	"Self-Portrait in 3 Colors" (C. Mingus)
	"Windows" (C. Corea)
	"Why, Someone Tell Me Why" (P. Christlieb)
	"Jinrikisha" (J. Henderson)
Rock	"Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana)
	"Son of Mr. Green Genes" (F. Zappa)
Bossa Nova¹	"One Note Samba" (A.C. Jobim)
Tatooine-Style Dixie	"Cantina Band" from the soundrack to Star Wars IV: A New Hope (J. Williams)
Doug's Originals	"Doug's Mood" (notes)
	"Clash of the Theories"
	"Here Come the Cats"

Other Music in the Stanford Linguistics Department

The original department band, Dead Tongues
The Stanford Chamber Chorale, to which some department members belong
Music collaborations in the department, shown graphically (pdf)

¹Are bossa novas sambas? Are sambas bossa novas? We follow the expert discussion at http://brazilianmusic.com/mrsamba/gvergueiro.html and assume that they are one and the same.

Website Maintained by Doug Ball. Last updated 10 Nov 2007.