Meet the Young Musicians Revitalizing Cajun Music in the South
"This is not just Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s music. This is my music, just as it was theirs."
Adeline Miller still remembers the first time she became interested in playing music.
“When I first moved to Louisiana at five years old, I went to a jam session,” explains Miller, whose parents relocated to her father’s native Bayou State from Vermont once they started a family. “I saw a guy playing fiddle, and he was like, ‘You should do it!’”
Today, Miller is one of the frontwomen of Amis du Teche, a band she started a decade ago with friends when she was just 12 to help preserve the tradition of Cajun music and which is named after the Bayou Teche waterway in her south Louisiana town of Breaux Bridge. Cajun music, hallmarked by accordions, fiddles, and French lyrics, is a genre of folk music originating from the Acadians, now referred to as Cajuns, when they were exiled from Nova Scotia in the 18th century.
Life wasn’t exactly easy for them in Louisiana either, though. In the 19th and 20th centuries, speaking French was heavily stigmatized, and Louisianans were encouraged to assimilate and learn English. In fact, the use of French in Louisiana schools was banned in the Louisiana Constitution of 1921. Recent decades, however, have seen a revival of the French language. The Council for Development of French in Louisiana was established by the state legislature in 1968, renewing the local emphasis on Francophone traditions. And as new generations seek to represent their heritage, Cajun musical traditions are having a similar renaissance amongst younger Louisianans.
“It’s not just thinking, ‘This is Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s music,’” Miller explains. “This is my music, just as it was theirs. I identify with this culture; I identify with the music. This is my heritage, and this is my language.”
Fresh off the recording of Amis du Teche’s recent debut, self-titled album and performances at South by Southwest and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Miller takes great pride in showcasing her Louisiana roots through music. In high school, she learned French so she could sing passed-down songs she heard growing up, hoping to give performances reminiscent of what audience members might have heard from their families growing up.
That said, Amis du Teche makes the music of their ancestors their own. The band doesn’t have an accordion player, an instrument at the center of most Cajun bands, and two women lead the band. Not to mention, their new album features five original Cajun songs, not just their spin on the classics.
This is [not just] Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s music. This is my music, just as it was theirs.
Like Miller, Luke Huval grew up immersed in Louisiana’s music, the son of French speakers. His parents met at a Cajun restaurant where his father performed in a band. Huval learned how to play the fiddle and the accordion as a teenager and has been performing ever since. “The music reflects me and my family and my people, and it resonates with me,” Huval says. “It feels like a part of me and a part of us. That’s why I think it’s important to keep playing it.”
As such, many of his evenings are spent at local bars and restaurants, performing the same sounds he heard growing up for a new generation of two-steppers.
The renaissance of Cajun music extends beyond the stage, too. Megan Brown Constantin is a Cajun musician, music teacher, and host of “Encore,” a radio show that highlights archived Cajun and Creole Music hosted at her alma mater, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Lafayette is the heart of Cajun Country in Louisiana. Located in the Acadiana region of the state, many of the resident’s have Acadian heritage and make up a majority of the state’s French-speaking population.
Constantin didn’t grow up speaking French, but was immersed in the area’s culture from a young age. Her grandparents owned a Cajun restaurant where local bands would play, and it was a weekly occurrence for her family to go dance there as a family when she was growing up.
When she was a teenager, she learned her first French song to perform with her parents at a cultural camp in West Virginia. From there, she was hooked. When she returned home, she learned French so she could perform even more Cajun songs, eventually graduating with a degree in French. Soon after, she established two trios with college friends: T’Monde and Les Bassettes.
“The little Cajun music bug bit me,” says Constantin, who still performs today.
“Encore” airs on KRVS, a public radio station out of Lafayette that focuses on traditional Louisiana music styles; she also teaches traditional Cajun and Creole music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “You can’t create authentically without knowing where something came from,” Constantin argues. “Everybody has their own musical influences outside of traditional music, and so, you incorporate that as you start to create your own.”
Meanwhile, Miller is currently on tour with Amis du Teche this summer. Performing shows in Canada and the Northeastern United States, she is excited to bring a little piece of Acadiana to the rest of the world. “Not everyone has something that’s just sitting in their city,” she says. “They’ll take an interest in this Cajun culture, but we live this stuff every day. The younger generation is letting people know how special it is to live here.”