Cajun

What is Cajun Music?
Cajun music grew up rubbing shoulders with blues, country and hillbilly music, and later helped inspire rock and roll and swamp pop, and all these influences can be found in the music. On the other hand Cajun music doesn't sound like anything else, with its bluesy fiddles and accordions, washboards and big steel Cajun triangles. It certainly must have something when people come back again and again to listen to songs mostly in Cajun French, which even French people find hard to understand.

Who Are the Cajuns?
Along the bayous of Louisiana, south and west of New Orleans. live a unique people, the Cajun French. Their ancestors first settled in Canada, but after being expelled by the British, found their way south to Louisiana. Here they created a unique culture, combining old French traditions with black Creole and Native American Indian influences. They are renowned for their warmth, hospitality and love of having a good time. As they say in Louisiana, "Laissez les bon temps rouler"- let the good times roll.

Cajun Dancing
Cajun music is dance music, whether for an all night house dance ("Bal de maison") or a "fais-do-do", a public dance in a dance hall or honkytonk. The traditional Cajun dances are the Cajun waltz and the old-fashioned two-step. More recently, a new dance was invented in Louisiana, and variously called the Cajun Jitterbug, the Bayou Jig or the Crippled Chicken. This is a bit like salsa or  jive, but enormously easier to learn.

Cajun Food
"Jambalay, crawfish pie, filé gumbo". Cajun cooking is a mixture of French country cuisine with African and even American Indian cooking and always with a touch of hot sauce. Gumbo, the typical Cajun stew, can be made with chicken, or meat, or seafood, or most usually a whole mixture of things. Jumbalaya is a rice and meat dish related to Spanish paella. The crawfish is also a key Cajun ingredient, whether boiled whole, in a pie, or smothered in A-2-FAY (étoufée) sauce.