Unpacking the Louisiana Ballad Tradition: Cajun and Creole Songs of Love, Loss and Drink on the West Texas Stage

Abstract

Modern Cajun music, Creole music, and Zydeco are often grouped together at festivals and dance halls throughout Louisiana and around the world. These music styles are considered distinct by scholars and fans, yet they are all the result of related generations of Creolization; the product of the variegated host of older localized styles created and impacted by patterns of immigration beginning in the eighteenth century. General audiences, from outside the Southwestern Louisiana area, experience this music as