Clif St. Laurent is a proud native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a multi-hyphenate artist, producer, linguist, educator, and Creole cultural activist whose work bridges the worlds of music, performance, language, and cultural preservation. An accomplished vocalist, songwriter, composer, musician, music director, actor, and dialect coach, Clif has spent more than two decades cultivating a diverse career across stage, screen, and recording.
Having studied performing arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Clif has established himself as a versatile entertainer and creative professional. An alumnus of Season 10 of American Idol, he released his debut EP, Remember Our Love, in 2016. His accomplishments in the performing arts also include receiving the award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Seaweed in Hairspray. His creative work extends into film and television, having served as dialect coach and co-producer of Tambou, the first film produced in Louisiana Creole. He also composed the original score and served as music supervisor for Torn Direction, for which filmmaker Tameka C. Bob received the Best Breakthrough Filmmaker award at the 2026 Miracle Makers International Film Festival.
Equally accomplished in language preservation and education, Clif earned certifications in linguistics from the University of Leicester, the University of York, and other institutions. He designed and taught the first Louisiana Creole (Kouri-Vini) course ever offered at Louisiana State University. Among his most significant contributions, Clif is one of the developers of the modern Kouri-Vini orthography—the writing system that provides a foundation for literacy, education, and the language’s continued revitalization. Kouri-Vini itself has even been featured as a clue on Jeopardy!.
Clif is the founder of the University of Louisiana Creole, an educational platform dedicated to advancing Kouri-Vini through language instruction, immersion, and cultural engagement. He serves as President of Chinbo, Inc., an organization committed to the preservation, revitalization, and promotion of Louisiana Creole language and culture. He is also the host and producer of the PBS | LPB digital series Kouri-Vini 101, introducing audiences to the language and its cultural heritage beyond the classroom.
His artistic and linguistic pursuits converge on Dawn Richard’s album Creole Culture, where his voice can be heard speaking Kouri-Vini on two interludes. This collaboration reflects his broader commitment to positioning Louisiana Creole not simply as a historical language to be preserved, but as a living, evolving vehicle for contemporary artistic expression and cultural innovation.
Over the past two decades, Clif has helped cultivate more than 1,000 new speakers of Kouri-Vini and continues to champion its revitalization. His ultimate ambition is to create a Louisiana where visitors anticipate needing to pick up a Kouri-Vini for Dummies guide before arriving.
And he would like to assure you that the one ‘f’ in his name is, in fact, intentional.