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No better place to start than at the root.

I hate to mention race here, but it's necessary, and this is a little bit over-simplified, but you'll get the point. There are no black Cajuns -- the black French-speaking people of SW Louisiana are Creoles, descended from the slaves and 'free people of color' who populated Louisiana in the 17th and 18th centuries. Cajuns are the white French-speaking people, descended from the Acadians, who were driven from the maritime provinces (Acadia) by the British, and eventually settled in Louisiana.

Several years ago I went to a show called 'The French Connection'. Somebody had put it together for a short tour, and it was a very cool overview of the transformation of Celtic/Brittany folk music in the New World. There was a folk group from Brittany, with pipers, fiddle and accordion that sounded positively Celtic, then a group of Quebecois musicians who also used fiddle and accordion, but already sounding different than the guys from Brittany, less Celtic somehow. This was essentially the music the Acadians brought to Louisiana with them during the 'grande derangement', before mixing with the Creoles already in Louisiana. Then we heard Eddie Lejeune and The Morse Playboys. When they started playing, with fiddle, accordion and guitar, the music sounded positively Black; the Blues influence was overt and obvious, although you could still hear the common thread that reached back to Brittany.

Amede Ardoin's music was neither Cajun nor Zydeco, but traditional Creole. His ground-breaking recordings of original and traditional tunes became the foundation for both Cajun and Zydeco down the road. Some of the Cajun accordionists who set the standards for Cajun dance hall music in the late 40's and early 50's actually heard Amede first-hand, Nathan Abshire being a good example.

Others, such as Iry Lejeune (Eddie's father), learned his music from the recordings. Iry Lejeune is often given credit for 'creating' modern Cajun dance hall music, but if you have even a passing familiarity with the recordings of Amede Ardoin, you will hear that Iry was for the most part re-cycling Amede's music. Thus Creole tunes like 'Eunice Two Step' became the backbone of the 'traditional Cajun' repertoire.

To confuse the issue even further, Amede's partner on many of his classic recordings of the 20's was Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee. McGee had learned tunes from his father and uncle, so his repertoire consisted of tunes that were already old in the 20's. So this influence of older, Celtic/European styles was felt in Amede's music as well. The influence ran both ways, with Amede bringing McGee into the Blues on tunes like 'Les Blues de Crowley'.

There are still Creole musicians playing in the traditional style derived from Amede Ardoin (notably Les Amis Creole, who have a new release on Arhoolie), but for the most part the Creole musicians of today play Zydeco, which is the music created when the Blues and R&B common thoughout the South in the 50's were fused with the traditional Creole music by Clifton Chenier and his contemporaries.

Rene, I think you have the Ardoin lineage a little mixed up. Chris and Sean Ardoin are the sons of Lawrence 'Black' Ardoin (who has an Arhoolie album of his own, 'Tradition Creole', recorded in 1984), whose father was Bois-Sec. Dexter is Chris and Sean's cousin, his father being Lawrence's brother Morris Ardoin, whose album with Dennis Stroughmatt turned up on Sherman's playlist just the other day. I've never played with Chris, but I have played with Sean and toured briefly with Dexter.

Hey Calvin, didn't you read any of what I wrote? Amede Ardoin is most definitely not Cajun, although his work became the basis for a lot of the Cajun music of the 50's and later.