What is cajun music and where did it come from?                                              Go To Home Page

• A lonesome desperate voice is singing of heartbreak and love, singing in French.
• A fiddle adds plaintive drones and harmony.
• A boisterous accordion, all staccato attack and ornate rolls, provides lift and bounce.
• Beneath this trinity of voice, fiddle and accordion, a rhythm guitar and a great iron triangle jangle divine music.
• The result is the quintessential sound of the South Louisiana prairies and bayous, Cajun music.

The early history of the Cajuns is a tale of endurance against outside forces bent on their destruction.

1. In the seventeenth century, the first European settlers left western France and sailed for the new world. Their destination was Cadie, or Acadia, a region of New France that is now called Nova Scotia.
2. There, they and their descendants lived until 1755, when they were forced to leave by the British authorities. Many Acadians were deported to English colonies in what is now the southern U.S. More wandered to the West Indies and elsewhere.
3. Most of them eventually ended up as subsistence farmers in South Louisiana, where there was already a French population, and where the Spanish government welcomed Catholic immigrants.
4. In Louisiana, they reconstructed their culture and made modifications to suit their new environment. They had contact with new groups, principally Native Americans and free people of color.
5. This environment allowed Acadians, who in their rough and ready French called themselves "Cadiens" or "Cajuns", to combine elements of French, Celtic, Spanish, Native American and African music into a new and unique musical genre: Cajun music.

[the above is a gratefully received extract from http://teachersnetwork.org/dcs/acadian/allons/index.htm]

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