In 1946, Harry Choates, a Cajun fiddle virtuoso, changed the course of American musical history when his recording of the so-called Cajun national anthem "Jole Blon" reached number four on the national Billboard charts. Cajun music became part of the American consciousness for the first time thanks to the unprecedented success of this issue, as the French tune crossed cultural, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic boundaries. Country music stars Moon Mullican, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, and Hank Snow r...

• Acknowedgements
• Preface
• Introduction: Framing Cajun Music
• 1 Social Music
• 2 Early Commercial Era
• 3 A Hete- list text hererogeneous Tradition
• 4 Becoming the Folk
• 5 Cajun Swing Era
• 6 The Modern Cajun Sound
• 7 Cajun National Anthem
• 8 A New Mental World
• Epilogue: Escaping Isolation
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Cajun Redux: A Discographic Essay of Early Cajun Music Reissues on Compact Disk