Cajun Culture in Lafayette

Story and photos by Kathleen Walls

Lafayette, Louisiana traces its roots to the 1750s and 1760s, when thousands of French Canadians were forced from their homes by the British during the French and Indian War. This event, known as Le Grand Derangement, led to the displacement of the Acadians, whose name eventually evolved into "Cajun."

The Acadians brought their French-Canadian heritage with them, but in Louisiana, their culture blended with existing traditions, forming what is now celebrated as Cajun Culture. This melding of influences is evident in Cajun music, which features the German accordion, French fiddle, Spanish guitar, and African instruments like the triangle, rub board, and spoons.

The cultural fusion extended to food as well. German sausage influenced the creation of boudin, while African okra became a staple of gumbo. Today, Lafayette is recognized as the hub of Cajun culture, renowned for its history, music, and cuisine.

Freetown: A Historic District

Just outside downtown Lafayette lies Freetown, an area settled around the Civil War and recognized as a historic district since 2016. Originally home to free people of color, Freetown became a vibrant community that included Africans, Lebanese, Acadians, Spanish, Greeks, and other working people, reflecting a diversity not always seen outside New Orleans. The mural saying "Life is better when we come together" is just outside Freetown but exemplifies its culture.

 

Vermilionville

Vermilionville Historic Village immerses you in Louisiana's past with a recreated Acadian village dating from 1765 to 1890. The site offers authentic Acadian homes and recently opened a new brewery.

On my latest visit there, Ivy, out guide, began a conversation with the docent doing the spinning which was done by the oldest unmarried daughter in the family. It hit me that is where the word "spinster" originated.

At L'Ecole, a reproduction of an 1890s Cajun schoolhouse, a docent discussed the evolution of Cajun words and their differences from traditional French. The early 1900s saw efforts to suppress Cajun culture, with children forbidden to speak French and adults ridiculed for doing so. Fortunately, Cajun pride is now resurging. Traditional crafts continue, with quilters, blacksmiths, and boat builders demonstrating age-old skills.

La Maison Coussan, built around 1850, exemplifies typical Cajun and Creole homes, constructed of cypress and insulated with bousillage, a mix of Spanish moss and mud.

Carrying on the music tradition there is a Cajun Jam in  the Performance Center of Vermilionville every Saturday from 11am to 2pm. Local musicians come and play Cajun and Creole music.

Art and Culture

Lafayette has Art Walks every second Saturday but any day, it's allover the city. The bus and train station called the Rosa Parks Center has a statue you'll want to see.

Acadiana Center for the Arts has supported Murals and unique Artboxes, traffic signal boxes that feature original artwork recognizing Lafayette's culture, printed on high-quality vinyl wraps, around the city.

There are so many mural, you can take a mural walk. Many of the murals are by Robert Dafford, a local muralist. One of my favorites is Til All That's Left is a Postcard, showing a butterfly, bird, a mosquito hawk, and a cypress swamp.  It was originally painted 1984 and recently retouched. Interestingly I was in Paducah, Kentucky recently and admired his murals on the floodwall.

Sans Souci is one of Lafayette's art galleries. Their artists are all the members of the Louisiana Crafts Guild. I was amazed at the variety of art there from painting to pottery, jewelry and many other types of crafts.

Music is celebrated in Lafayette as well and visual arts. We stopped in at Sola Violins and met Anya Burgess, a violin maker and Grammy-nominated fiddle player who creates beautiful violins at her shop.  She also has performance on Monday night something inside the store and sometimes larger events in the atrium just outside her door.

Don't miss the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum. Barbara led us through many of the revolving exhibits. She told us, "For the first time ever they have all women artists in the museum exhibits."

An exhibit by Mare Martin, an artist from Opelousas, Louisiana, was featured when I visited. It's Beyond the Botanical. Martin is known for her art that is deeply inspired by nature and gardening as this one reflects.

They do have some permanent exhibits. Fragile Matter, a combination of art and nature by three artists, Manon Bellet, Hannah Chalew, and Harriet Joor combine real plants with art. Barbara describes the works of the project as an, "Amazing system where we water it up here and it funnels down."Pointing to plants at the bottom, "We don't water those, it drips through. And so you can see the cypress knees."

There's a Louisiana Music Museum in the works that will be housed in one of the oldest buildings in the state.

Lafayette Acadian Cultural Center

At Lafayette Acadian Cultural Center, you learn about Le Grand Derangement, the exile that created the culture of south Louisiana. In the late 1750s, thousands of Arcadians driven out of Nova Scotia, Canada during the French and Indian war. They were welcomed in Catholic Spanish-owned Louisiana.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline tells how family and loved ones were torn apart when the Arcadians were loaded onto ships  taking them out of Canada. Evangeline and Gabriel were engaged and, after the deportment, she spent most of her life searching for her lost love. In real life, Gabriel had already married someone else by the time she found him.

Lafayette Museum

For more of Lafayette's history, Jean Mouton, founder of Lafayette, built what is now the Lafayette Museum as his Sunday home in the early 1800s for when they attended church. The family lived far out of town and this was close to the church.

It was later the home of his descendant, Alexandre Mouton, Lafayette's 11th governor, and first Democrat to hold the office. It's furnished in the style of the 1850's. I particularly loved the detail of the furnishings. A tiny kitten curled on a chair looks so real, I wanted to pet it. The gold sofa is gorgeous. You can take a self-guided or guided tour.

Tabasco Factory

We toured the facility where they make Tabasco sauce and visited a museum that tells the history of Avery Island. Edmund McIlhenny married into the Avery family. He founded the McIlhenny Tabasco Company in 1868 using seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers originally from Mexico or Central America. He named his sauce "Tabasco," from a Mexican-Indian word meaning "place where the soil is humid."

 The fifth generation of McIlhenny's still owns and runs the Tabasco factory. Tabasco is one of only 850 companies around the world that hold a royal warrant of appointment certifying the company as a supplier to Queen Elizabeth II. I assume it still holds for King Charles. There are many varieties of the hot sauce and other Tabasco products they make.. In the gift shop,  I sampled the Raspberry Chipolti Ice Cream . We got a taste of their many sauces when we dined in their restaurant, 1868.

Jungle Gardens

Ned McIlhenny traveled around the world. He loved the various plants and trees he saw, so he started the garden on Avery Island in 1895. He created a raised rookery for the endangered snowy egrets and called it "bird city" We did the driving tour of Jungle Gardens. We saw a few alligators soaking up the sun and some ancient moss-draped oak trees. The grounds are gorgeous.

Moncus Park.

Our guide, Mary Allie Hebert, led us around Moncus Park. It was once part of the University of Louisiana and used for agricultural research. Since 1920 it was known as "the Horse Farm." In 2005, the university put it up for sale. It was doomed to be another mall or golf course but two concerned university seniors, Danica Adams and Elizabeth "EB" Brooks launched the "Save the Horse Farm" campaign. The community agreed and thanks to those concerned citizens and Mr. Jim Moncus, who contributed the initial funding, it's preserved as a community park.

It's beautifully landscaped with native plants, a Veteran's Memorial, a children's playground with a splash pool, hiking trails, a fishing pier, an amphitheater, a  dog park, the cutest little tree house built from lumber from a horse barn that was on the property. The tree house is accessed from a boardwalk. Orlando Mountain in the park is the highest point in Lafayette at about 60 feet,

The park is also home to a farmer's market every Saturday. It's so much more than a place to buy produce. You'll meet artists ranging from jewelry makers to authors with the Writers Guild of Arcadiana. Local musicians do an informal jam session there. One man was playing the most unusual bass instrument I've ever seen. It was made from a washtub. Of course, you'll find food ranging from fresh veggies to Creole and Cajun meals.

Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist

There has been a church on the site since 1821 when Jean Mouton donated land to the Catholic diocese. The cathedral, built in 1916, is a stately Romanesque Revival style with stained glass windows, oil paintings, and statues of saints inside. It was  elevated from a church to a cathedral in 1918. Its Casavant Frères organ and elaborate gold-toned altar are treasures.

St. John Cathedral Oak next to the cathedral is one of the largest live oak trees in the United States and is almost 500 years old.

Festivals

Lafayette is big on festivals. They are celebrating something almost all the time. The largest event is a five-day event held the last weekend in April called Festival International de Louisiana,  and there are many others

 

Festivals Acadiens et Créoles

We visited Lafayette a few years ago for the Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, an annual celebration of Cajun Culture held on the second week in October. Instead of a ribbon cutting to open the festival, they had a boudin cutting. The live music is Cajun and zydeco music. Roddie Romero & the Hub City Allstars opened the festival with a tribute to Clifton Chenier, known as the King of Zydeco.

There are food tents as well from many of the local restaurants. It's like taking a Cajun food tour all in one place. We did a cooking class with Chef Kevin Foil who taught us to make jambalaya.

Downtown Alive!

Their Downtown Alive! is a free concert held every Friday night in downtown Lafayette. It started as a small street party on Friday, April 8th, 1983.

Blue Moon

Blue Moon Saloon is one of those places it's impossible to describe. It's like an old fashioned fais do-do, A traditional Cajun social gathering with music and dancing. It's a dance hall that is a celebration of Cajun and Zydeco music, an indoor/outdoor mix with a hostel thrown in. 

It's part back yard and part under a shelter and always packed tight. You wend your way through the crowd to the bar. Then head for the bandstand where things are jumping. The last time I visited Amis du Teche was playing. The band is led by two young women, Adeline Miller, fiddler and vocalist, and Amelia Powell, guitarist and vocalist, backed by Adeline's brother on bass and a drummer with a driving beat. You can't stay still when they play.

 

Dining

Rock n' Bowl is one more fun thing to do in Lafayette. It's a combination of dining, dancing, and bowling alley. The original one was opened in New Orleans but during Hurricane Katrina, the owner evacuated to Lafayette, fell in love with the city, and opened a branch here. 

 

Bayou Teche Brewing mixes a Sunday Zydeco Brunch with music, delicious pizzas, and craft beer that will get you dancing. The band, John Wilson and the Zydeco House Rockets, even invited one of our group to play the fretboard with them when we visited.

 

 

A popular tradition is a Zydeco breakfast or brunch. At Breaux Bridge, the Crawfish Capital of the World, Buck and Johnny's Zydeco Breakfasts, bands like Chubby Carrier and The Bayou Swamp Band gets Cajuns and visitors together on the dance floor doing the two-step while they dine on breakfasts like Don't Mess with my Tasso and Swamp Rice.

Creole culture is represented at Laura's II. Owner, Madonna Brussard, based it on a small restaurant her grandmother founded. The most popular specials are the Turkey Wings and the Fried Pork Chops. I met her again on my most recent trip to Lafayette.

Spoonbill Watering Hole and Restaurant was once a gas station. It still keeps a lot of the signage, but the food is much better than gas station stuff.

Romancelli Bistro e Vino offers elegant Italian mixed with Cajun dining with wine pairings. It has a new Orleans French Quarter feel. I loved my Shrimp Scampi, and the chocolate cake is to die for.

Johnson's Boucaniere has been processing boudin and smoked meats as a family tradition dating back to the 1930s.

Pampalona Tapas Bar is one of the restaurants where that serve a more Spanish cuisine with just a hint of Cajun. One unusual drink special is Absinthe, a licorice-tasting green drink once banned.

The French Press's Chef Justin Girouard was nominated for a James Beard award. I enjoyed French Toast with cream cheese and banana filling and topped with a berry/champagne compote. This one also had a French Quarter feel.

Don's Seafood serves fresh, local seafood  Cajun style. I had the boiled shrimp and my friend had the fired and we were both happy and stuffed. We watched then cooking oysters in the half shell and I wished I had room for one more bite to sample those oysters.

Acadian Superette is a local hangout in Freetown that specializes in smoked meats and traditional Cajun food. I had a tasty Shrimp Po' Boy.

Reve Coffee Lab is a coffee lovers dream and the offer some tasty pastries as well.

Central Pizza for great pizza and more, and Sunday's Soda Fountain, for an old-fashioned soda fountain experience, are two other downtown restaurants worth trying.

Borden's has their last remaining ice cream parlor located in Lafayette. It dates to 1940.

I've visited Lafayette many times and this story is a mix of my experiences there. To see and do all of these places, allow yourself at least a week. Two is even better.

 

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