On only the most moonless of nights deep in the Acadiana bayou, if on the unlikely chance you can get someone to point you in the right direction, if against all odds you can tread through the swamps without being nibbled to death by nutria and happen to stumble undetected toward just the right clearing at just the right time, you might—just might—hear a sound as ancient and primeval as the gators, waiting patiently to process your lifeless carcass into crawfish food.

Tink-a-tinka-tink… tink-a-tinka-tink… tink-a-tinka-tink…

If, as the Grateful Dead’s drummer and percussion philosopher says, the Big Bang was the first drumbeat, this is the sound pulsating from the stars. It’s the direct link between your very DNA and the celestial firmament. It’s …, oh who are we kidding? It’s Christine Balfa playing the triangle. And occasionally yelling. Or more like yelping. No more, no less. And it’s offered as a joke, a perfect “gag gift” per the Valcour Web site. Check out the subtly nuanced distinctions between the two-step tintinnabulations of “Blues de Port Arthur” and the D.L. Menard classic “La Porte en Arrière.” There, uh, aren’t any. Now compare to Balfa’s “original composition “Tit Fer à Grand-Père” (“a little iron for Grandfather”). Uh-huh. Of course, there are also some waltzes in the mix, so don’t start claiming there’s no range or variety here.

But also don’t dismiss it, either. Joke or otherwise, there’s something to this. For one thing, playing the triangle is not as easy as it sounds. Playing it well, that is. Seriously. You try keeping that steady rhythms, with the syncopations, with the certainty and easy Balfa achieves. See? No mean feat.

And there is a hypnotic, dare we say trance-inducing quality to these tracks. The equivalent recorded out on the sands of the Sahara or in the rainforests of Sulawesi would be considered ethno-musicological treasures, and by some even spiritual sound maps. Why dismiss this so lightly?

At the very least, the triangle is an essential element of Cajun music, the vertebrae on which the rest of the body is reliant, offered here by a true heiress of the form, the sounds and rhythms encoded in her genes by her father, the late fiddler Dewey Balfa, and generations before him. This may not be the beat of the universe. But it’s the beat of a universe.

Tink-a-tinka-tink…