"Spaces of Affect": Versions and Visions of Cajun Cultural History

Abstract

During the midto late-1980s, things Cajun and Creole became hot, in the conjoined senses of spicy and popular, most notably in cuisine and music, so much so that various companies fought during the decade's final years to employ Cajun and zydeco rhythms and images as background for advertising products as diverse as motor vehicles, fast-food chains, laundry detergent, and potato chips.' That this trend has run its course became evident in the hyper, even surreal, and mercifully short-lived TV series Broken Badges (fall 1990) in which a New Orleans-Cajun detective named Beau Jean (played by Miguel Ferrer, the FBI pathologist Albert in Twin Peaks) was displaced to southern California to add linguistic exoticism and leadership of sorts to an undercover team of occupationally handicapped police officers.' Despite such dilution and distortion of Cajun and Creole identities in the mass media, other movements have developed in Cajun music and cultural studies over the past two decades that quietly and forcefully seek to define Cajun identity through the creation of and reflection about innovations in musical words and forms.