Greg, sorry I took too seriously what you meant as a joke.

I hadn't given much thought to the African influence in Cajun music, and I don't see that there's any more such influence there than there is in the many other musical forms to evolve in southern Louisiana (e.g., jazz). A bit less so, indeed, I would say.

Throughout the US and especially in the South (where most black people have lived until relatively recently), there has been much more interaction between the races in music than in "real life," and of course we're all much better off for it.

I think of "straight" traditional Cajun music as being dictinct from Zydeco and any other music of the French-speaking Blacks "Creoles." While Zydeco seems to have taken many characteristics of Cajun music and mixed in plenty of African and African-American elements, I don't hear nearly as much influence in the other direction, that is, of black music upon the white Cajun tradition. I know there has to be some, if for no other reason that musicians of both races have often "crossed over" to play with each other in various ensembles, but among the audiences and communities as a whole, there has been nearly as much segregation among French-speakers as among Southerners in general. Real animosity and Bull-Connor-style repression have never been part of the Cajun/Creole scene, but there is a long history of the inclination to "keep with one's own kind."

Just my opinion, of course, based on living hereabouts for 35 years -- but *not* for my whole life...