Songs of a Summer: Live Cajun Music is Back

For the past year and some months, things have been grey.  Lackluster.  Monotonous.  As color returns to our lives in the way of family and friends, so too does the sound of live music, and nothing plays better live than Cajun and zydeco.  Nothing gets you moving and grooving and living more than the sound of the songs generations of Cajuns have grown up listening to and loving.  Dance halls in Breaux Bridge, LA are crowded, bar patrons are spilling outside to drink and chat and listen, and restaurants known for live music have started booking entertainment again. 

Cajun and zydeco music are one of the major draws to Breaux Bridge, LA for tourists.  They come to dance, eat, drink, and listen and they have been doing it for decades.  Cajun music in Breaux Bridge has a long and detailed history.  Coming first in the form of unaccompanied ballads with Acadian immigrants, they were sung traditionally at weddings and funerals, and informally for small gatherings.  Next came the addition of the fiddle, then twin fiddles, the accordion, and others until it became the recognizable sound we hear today.  As the music changed, so too did the locations where music was played and heard.  In the 1920s, dance halls opened, and Cajun music eventually moved out of people’s homes and into the larger dance hall venues.  If anything, this past year has forced many Cajuns to return to their roots of small gatherings outdoors, and small jam sessions have popped up to soothe the soul and lighten hearts.

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