Bio by Trae McMaken for the Michigan Traditional Arts Program
Rene Cote’s life has been full of the fiddle. Born on February 15th, 1931, Rene began playing the fiddle at the age of eight has been playing the fiddle for seventy-five years. Rene’s list of musical accomplishments is long. Besides being at times an almost daily musical fixture in his own community, he was featured on Francophone television (Village et Visage) and on a national stage at the World’s Fair in Quebec where Rene represented all of Canada for the fiddle. He was given the keys to the city of Pembroke, Ontario, location of one of Canada’s most famous fiddle gatherings. Rene is the oldest inductee in the Northern Ontario Country Music Hall of Fame. Rene was born into a Francophone community in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the city in which he still resides. Fiddle music was rife in his childhood, as well as traditional French chansons, step dancing, and house parties. Rene’s mother and his mother’s twin sisters fiddled. His uncle was a Scottish fiddle champion. Before Rene was old enough to participate in the house parties, he would sneak down the stairs at night to hear who was playing the violin. Rene played his first house party at the age of 13. He has a voracious appetite for fiddle tunes and studied violin as a young man while also absorbing the traditional fiddling of his community.
Living so near the border, Rene has long played not just in Ontario but around Michigan as well. He was a longtime member of the Sugar Island Boys, who he first met in Soo, Michigan. Besides Rene, the Sugar Island Boys has featured musicians such as Joe Menard, Jack Chambers, and Coleman Trudeau in addition to others. Rene is greatly respected by fiddlers in Michigan, Ontario, and further afield and is a wealth of knowledge about the history of fiddling in Michigan and Ontario. Rene practices two hours a day, and he is encouraged to see that fiddling is still going strong on both sides of the border.
Rene practices an average of two hours a day in the morning when he feels clear minded. He has a nook in his home displaying pictures, instruments, and recordings. As a boy, Rene used to take a nickel and go play a Don Messer recording on a Nickolodeon, then run back home while humming the tune, grab his fiddle, and attempt to learn it. He would repeat the process as necessary. In his fiddling nook at home, he has a large number of recordings and a CD player where he listens to music and learns tunes. Sheets of paper list the names of tunes that he is learning. Kenny Baker is one fiddler that Rene has been studying of late. Rene has played whatever style has caught his ear over the years. When asked about the state of fiddling today as compared to his youth, he said that he is encouraged to see fiddling still going strong on both sides of the Michigan-Ontario border.
Read more about Rene on the MSU Museum Great Folks blog entry “All From the Heart: the Fiddling of Rene Coté: http://gr8tfolks.blogspot.com/2014/06/all-from-heart-fiddling-of-rene-cote.html
