WILLIMANTIC   He learned to play the fiddle from his daddy and now, more than eight decades later, he is passing that knowledge on to others who will follow in his footsteps.  

And footsteps, in the case of French-Canadian fiddler Rosaire Lehoux, are as important as the motion of his hands because if he didn't keep time tapping his feet, he'd be lost.  

The 85-year-old Willimantic musician will do it all Sunday afternoon at the Portuguese Club of Greater Hartford when he participates in a folk arts festival that pairs master artists and their apprentices.  

The program is the climax of a five-month apprenticeship sponsored by the Institute for Community Research, which matches up traditional artists from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island with those who want to learn their art.

The club is at 730 N. Mountain Road in Newington. The free event, which will also feature ethnic foods, will be from 1 to 5 p.m.  

Lehoux never formally studied the fiddle, but he was born into a musical family.  

He says his father, Oscar, was a better fiddler than he is and his mother, Regina, played the organ.   Cousins, uncles, aunts - everyone played an instrument when the family got together on the small farm in Giroux, Quebec, near the city of Cherbourg.  

When he asked his father to buy him a fiddle, the older man said "no," but then made a deal with his son: "You can use mine," he told the boy. "But don't break it."  

Lehoux didn't break the fiddle. Instead, following in his father's footsteps and hand movements, he learned to play the same tunes.  

"It's all in here," he says, pointing to his head when asked whether he writes down his music, most of it centuries old songs from his culture.  

They played in church, at family gatherings, at holiday square dances the music very much like the Zydeco-Cajon sounds, brought to Louisiana by French settlers.  

It also sounds very much like the music Loretta Lynn was raised on in Butcher Hollow, Ky., as depicted in the film "Coal Miner's Daughter."  

The music in that movie featured the kind of heel and toe tap dance Lehoux does when he plays, the sound of his feet resembling that of a horse's gallop.  

Through his childhood and early teen years, he'd join in with his family, playing in familiar comfortable venues at home, at family gatherings or in nearby dance halls.  

But his fiddle was silenced in 1957 when, seeking a better life for his young family, he moved from Canada to Willimantic and took a job in construction, a trade that didn't require him to speak English.  

Eventually, he gravitated to the American Thread Co. and worked in the mills as a machinist for nearly a quarter of a century.  

By then divorced, one night he attended a holiday party at Liberty's Restaurant on lower Main Street where he met Wanda Jung, whose co-workers at the nearby Laundromat on Brick Top Road talked her into attending.  

Jung had come to this country from her native Hamburg, Germany, in 1951 with her mother and three sisters "to have a better life" and to be near others in the family who had already settled in Lebanon.  

That night when Rosaire Lehoux asked Wanda Jung to dance, they immediately made sweet music together and soon they were married.  

And behind his music-loving wife's urging, Rosaire Lehoux picked up his fiddle once again. "It all came back to me," he said.  

He has been playing ever since with various French-Canadian bands in the area at the French Club, at senior citizen complexes, in music halls and commercial venues.  

Last spring, he was the star of a local music show on the Eastern Connecticut State University campus where he had students 60 years younger dancing in the aisles.  

Among the groups he still plays with are the Michael Grenier Band and another group that translates into "Happy Friend" from the French.  

Several years ago, he got involved with the Institute.  

These past few months, Lehoux has worked with two fiddlers: Nancy Lemme of West Warwick, R.I., and Daniel Boucher of Bristol.  

With his entire family in attendance, they will perform with him Sunday in a program featuring artists playing, singing and dancing to music from Puerto Rico, Portugal, Ireland, Laos, Trinidad, Cambodia and other countries.  

Also expected to take part in the program is Raouf Mama, a folk tale writer and storyteller from Benin, who teaches English at ECSU.  

What advice does this unschooled, "play it by ear" musician give his younger proteges, some of whom, unlike him, can read music and are classically trained?  

"I tell them they have to practice," he says in a voice still heavily accented with French. "But I also tell them they have to listen to somebody like my father."  

It's the way he learned: watching and learning from his father and then standing on the porch of the small farmhouse and playing 'til the cows came home.  

Lemme, who has studied with Lehoux since January, was drawn to the master fiddler because of his musical talent and the stories he tells his students about growing up on the farm in Quebec Province.  

Always interested in French-Canadian music, "I learned some tunes from him," she said, pointing out that his fiddling style, which involves more wrist action and use of the bow than other styles, is different from the classical violin style she was trained on.  

These days, Lemme plays what she calls "old-time stuff" in jam sessions with various groups.

Boucher has known Lehoux since the two met eight years ago at a concert in Hartford. From then on, they jammed together informally.  

Boucher started taking violin lessons at 8 and knows how to read music.   But, for years, he longed to play the French-Canadian style (which he says has Irish overtones), which is why he became an apprentice to the master.  

"He helped me get into what I love and that was the more traditional style," Boucher said. "We've all absorbed so much from him."  

Lynn Williamson, director of the institute and the woman responsible for getting Lehoux involved, said she learned of him about 12 years ago when a photo exhibit of artists toured the state.  

"Rosaire is very well known in the community and outside of it," she said.   "I realized right away that this was an untapped resource of knowledge. He has an amazing repertoire of songs, but he doesn't write them down, he has them in his head. We don't want to lose these tunes so he taught them to younger artists."  

But Lehoux, a tall, lanky man who doesn't look at all his age, is concerned about his advancing years and health (he occasionally gets dizzy when he plays), so he thinks this will be the last go-round as a master teacher.  

He does plan to continue performing publicly.  

"He thinks he's not good enough any more ... that he's too old," said Wanda. "I want him to do it, but I can't push him that much."  

One thing she won't tolerate, however, is if he quits playing altogether.   "Lots of times, he says he's going to quit but I won't let him do that," she said.  

But he really doesn't sound like he means it when he threatens to put up the instrument once and for all. "It keeps you busy," he said simply.

Copyright 2005, The Chronicle