Fred's Lounge — The Saturday Morning Broadcast

Alfred "Fred" Tate bought the building in 1946. By 1950, Fred's Lounge had revitalized the Courir de Mardi Gras tradition. Since 1962, radio broadcasts from the bar have been done in Louisiana French. Every Saturday morning since the 1960s, a live Cajun band plays starting at 8am, broadcast over KVPI radio. The bar is small, the band is loud, the dancing starts immediately. The broadcast ends around noon. The bar closes. Mamou goes quiet again. During Mardi Gras, the bar is open for the rest of the week. This is Acadiana — a region named for the Acadian refugees expelled from Canada by the British at the end of the Seven Years' War. The descendants of those exiles intermarried with other settlers, forming what became Cajun culture. At Fred's Lounge, you're not watching a performance. You're standing in a room where Louisiana French never stopped being the language of broadcast, where people who grew up with this music dance to it the way their parents did. In 1996, Louisiana governor Mike Foster declared Fred's Lounge the launching place of the Evangeline parish French renaissance. Arrive early. It fills fast. Located on Sixth Street in Mamou.