Louisiana Creole is experiencing a modest resurgence
Jourdan Thibodeaux has been employed every day since he turned ten. Nowadays, the dreadlocked millennial flips houses, produces pork sausages, and raises two young girls. However, his lifelong project is reviving his family’s heritage through his voice and his fiddle.
Born in southwestern Louisiana with African, French, Native American, and Spanish ancestry, he speaks with an accent that your correspondent had never heard before. Loss is the theme of his ballads. He laments in French that the young people of the bayous have forgotten their families and only understand the language of their conquerors. Kneeling in a church pew, he confesses that he fears it will all perish with him: ”Tu vis ta culture ou tu tues ta culture, il n’y a pas de milieu,” he sings, “You live your culture or you kill your culture, there is no in-between.”
The story of this culture dates back to before the founding of America. One year after the French settled New Orleans in 1718, the first slave ships arrived on Louisiana’s shores. Sustaining a hungry economy required many hands, and after two decades, there were four slaves for every free person in the colony. Sugarcane, the region’s main cash crop, was particularly labor-intensive, making communication between Europeans and Africans crucial.
2023-12-20 08:42:15
Article from www.economist.com
