Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an American-Made Music

Particularly interesting are discussions of the ways natives categorized their everyday modes of musical expression (domestic, social and religious ritual, dance entertainment), the advent of commercial recording, the cultural and stylistic tensions that developed between tradition and technology, the folkloristic misappropriation and promotion of "authentic" vernacular voices, the impact of modernity (urbanization, industrialization, the mass media) on a rural working class in transition, and the rise of a regional "star" (in this case, a song) that appealed to consumers outside of the local or ethnic group. Brasseaux - a ninth-generation Cajun in exile as a doctoral student in anthropology at Yale University and the son of a noted pioneer in the study of Acadian exiles in the Bayou State - argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Cajuns and Cajun music were never completely isolated from the world outside Acadiana.