Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana, United States

In addition to being known as the Cajun & Creole Country, Lafayette, LA is also known as the Heartbeat of Acadiana and with good reason. Our distinctive mix of Cajun, Creole and Zydeco have people coming down from all over for a two-stepping good time. On any night of the week you can listen to live music while sampling some authentic Cajun & Creole cuisine or kickback with a sazarac that will have your taste buds dancing as much as your feet.

Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana, United States

A relatively recent invention, the bellows-driven, vibrating reed squeezebox known as the accordion was first manufactured in Germany and later Russia in the 1820s. It is unknown who brought the first accordion to South Louisiana, or which French Creole or Acadian first played the instrument, but daguerreotypes from mid-century — decades before Germans immigrants settled Roberts Cove in 1881 — show accordions in use in the south and central portions of the state.

Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana, United States

A bowed string instrument, the fiddle is central to the sound, culture, and history of Cajun music. The history of the fiddle, an instrument more or less synonymous with the classical violin, is rooted in early 16th-century Western Europe, where it derived from the medieval, bowed string Byzantine lira.

Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana, United States

The triangle is a simple, percussive, rhythm instrument central to Cajun music. Consisting of two parts, the baton, or striker, and the triangle itself, the instrument was originally a form of upcycling, or creative reuse, in Acadiana.

Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana, United States

The frottoir — sometimes spelled froittoir — is a percussive, rhythmic instrument omnipresent in Zydeco music, and played, to a much lesser extent, in Cajun music. Also called the rubboard, washboard, and scrubboard, the frottoir takes its name from the standard French verb frotter, meaning ‘to scrub.’