Cajun Music It is impossible to separate Cajun music from Louisiana culture. Cajun influence essentially defines the state.

Cajun is a "Louisianian who descends from French-Speaking Acadians," however many common Cajun surnames such as Souileau and Romero are not Acadian in origin, but are Spanish, German or French Creole and some are even of Anglo or Scotch-Irish origin, as in the case of famed Cajun musicians Lawrence Walker and Dennis McGee (Cajun 1 Pp). For this reason, "contemporary scholars of Cajun history and culture tend to offer a more complex, comprehensive view, attributing the traits of modern-day Cajuns to a dynamic, unending process of ethnic interaction" (Cajun 1 Pp). Modern Cajuns are largely homogenous, however, their ancestry consists of a mixture of numerous ethnic groups (Cajun 1 Pp). The majority of early Acadians originated in the Centre-Ouest region of France,...

When Arcadians were forced out of Nova Scotia in 1755, many sought refuge in South Louisiana and again intermixed with other ethnic groups, especially with the French, Spanish, German, American Indian, and Anglo-American settlers (Cajun 1 Pp). Moreover, Cajuns borrowed a lot of their culture from the black Creoles, thus, "this cross-cultural pollination in Acadia and South Louisiana changed many dissimilar ethnic groups into a single new ethnic group, the Cajuns" (Cajun 1 Pp).
Therefore, Cajuns not only derive from French-speaking Acadians, but rather from several ethnic groups over which Acadian culture prevailed until the 20th century when Cajuns underwent a wide-spread process of rapid Americanization (Cajun 1 Pp).

Although Cajuns and Creoles are racially distinct,…