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Lafayette was founded in 1821 as Vermilionville on a bend in the Vermilion Bayou, part of the Acadian settlement pattern that spread across southwestern Louisiana after the British expelled French colonists from Nova Scotia in the 1750s. The city was renamed in 1884 to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who fought for American independence, and today it anchors Acadiana, the region where Cajun French culture, Creole traditions, and a specific way of eating, celebrating, and making music have survived and evolved for 270 years.

Zydeco music, with its washboard and accordion at the center, came out of the Black Creole communities around Lafayette, and Cajun music developed alongside it from the French fiddle traditions the Acadians brought from Nova Scotia.

The two genres are distinct but intertwined, and on any given weekend in October, during the Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, the two stages in Girard Park present both in a festival that locals treat as the real thing rather than a performance of culture for outsiders. The Vermilionville living history museum on the banks of the bayou, and the Acadian Cultural Center on Fisher Road, both provide serious context for what you hear.