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| Despite its current popularity, Cajun music has evolved through some lean years. Around the turn of the century Cajun was a predominently fiddle based music played at house dances (bals de maison) and fais-do-dos (named for the seperate room where children could be rocked to sleep). In the early 1900's, the diatonic accordian was adopted and by the thirties the music began to move out of homes and into dance halls and bars. |
| Traditional Cajun music suffered its first major blow at this time, when popular swing and country styles heard on the radio supplanted the older styles. The accordian was abandoned in favor of electric and steel guitars. In the late forties accordian-based music enjoyed a brief renaissance, spurred by Cajun hero Iry Lejeune. The boom was short-lived, however, as the banning of French in public schools, the oil boom, and improved roads and communication |
