Review: Christine Balfa Christine Balfa Plays the Triangle (Valcour Records)

The triangle is an essential part of Cajun music. The high ting gives it the ability to cut through a lot of rich textures to keep a song on track. Balfa got hers at a very young age and has played it—along with a number of other instruments—with her famous family in the Balfa Toujours for years.

Christine Balfa Plays the Triangle is not entirely the torture tape you might imagine. The rhythms tapped out on the iron triangle quickly become hypnotic, with a lone holler thrown in for color on “The Balfa Waltz.” Like a lot of Cajun music, this exercise is all about form; here, the form has been stripped down to the skeleton. valcourrecords.com

Essential track: “The Balfour Waltz”?Recommended if you like: Philip Glass, wind chimes, the snooze alarm