LASALLE POST

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

Musician Nominated for Music Award

For the last 12 years, teacher Steven Langlois, has been entertaining and educating students at the same time.

Langlois, who teaches at Herman High School, started writing songs in teacher’s college, to make learning French more interesting.  Once teaching, he made up a few songs for his own class, now eight albums later, Langlois who performs under the stage name Etienne, is going world wide.

“It’s become a really big hobby,” he jokes, adding that it’s pretty cool, especially when he gets emails from fellow teachers thanking him for making learning easy and fun.

The LaSalle musician was recently nominated for his third Canadian Independent Music Award in the Canada’s Favourite Children’s Artist category.

With a fan base of students in Grade 4 to 10, his music is “in your face”, he says, adding he uses hip-hop, rap and rock.

“The lyrics are teaching them.  They get so caught up in the music.”

In fact at concerts, fans will show p in Etienne T-Shirts, carrying posters and CDs hoping to get his autograph.

Each year the Canadian music industry nominates five musicians in different categories.  And since last year, fans have been able to vote on-line for their favourite artist at http://entertainment1.sympatico.msn.ca/music/cmw.

This is not the first time Langlois has been nominated for music awards.

In 2003, he won Favourite Album of the Year and in 2004, he was named Favourite Children’s Artist.  Due to scheduling conflicts, he’s never been able to go up on stage and accept his award.  He’s hoping to change all that this year.

“It would be nice to go up on stage,” he says.

The awards will be handed out on March 2 and everyone is encouraged to visit the above-mentioned web site to vote.

He begins his first world tour in the coming weeks.  In Canada, he’ll travel from Vancouver to Halifax and all over the United States.  This year, he will travel to New Zealand and possibly Australia to perform.

“I’m really excited about the tour,” he says.

Locally, he’ll be performing six shows at the Capitol Theatre in March and April and at Migration Hall in Kingsville February 15.

To learn more about Etienne, visit www.grammarjams.com.