Louisiana Creole is enjoying a modest revival

Jourdan Thibodeaux has had a job every day since his tenth birthday. These days the dreadlocked millennial flips houses, manufactures pork sausages and raises two little girls. But the project of his lifetime is resuscitating his family’s heritage with his voice and his fiddle.Born of African, French, Native American and Spanish descent in south-western Louisiana, he speaks with an accent your correspondent had never heard. Loss is the subject of his ballads. Young people of the bayous have forgotten their families, he laments in French, and understand only their conqueror’s language. Kneeling in a church pew he confesses that he fears it will all die with him: “Tu vis ta culture ou tu tues ta culture, il n’y a pas de milieu,” he sings, “You live your culture or you kill your culture, there is no in-between.”