The Cajuns of south Louisiana are the descendants of the Acadians who settled in what is now Nova Scotia in the 1630s.
Creoles are the black, French-speaking Catholic people of south Louisiana.
In Louisiana, Acadians created new music influenced by Spaniards, black people from Africa and Haiti, Anglos, Germans, and Native Americans. Acadians learned jigs and hoedowns and reels from their American neighbors, and added them to their repertoire of polkas and waltzes. The fiddle, versatile and portable, became the favored instrument, especially for dance music. An intricate style of twin fiddling evolved, with one fiddle playing the melody and a second one echoing the tune in a lower octave or playing a rhythmic harmony. As Louisiana French musicians began to adapt the old music, some of the most influential musicians were black Creoles who introduced blues elements in Cajun songs.