Festival International de Louisiane

Every April, downtown Lafayette becomes a five-day answer to a question that took two centuries to ask. The largest free Francophone music festival in the United States puts stages in the streets. Musicians from more than twenty-five countries. A single weekend might feature musicians from Senegal, Mali, Martinique, Quebec, and Lafayette on the same night. The festival launched in 1987, growing from the Cajun cultural revival of the 1970s. That revival happened in a place with a particular history. Acadiana — the twenty-two Louisiana parishes officially recognized in 1971 for their strong French Acadian cultural aspects — was inhabited by Attakapa people when Acadian refugees, expelled by the British after the Seven Years' War, arrived and settled. The Acadians intermarried with other settlers, forming Cajun culture. For generations afterward, the city was told its language and music were embarrassing. The festival's existence is an act of cultural defiance. It is entirely free. No tickets required.