Cajun music is a Louisiana hybrid, a blend of cultural influences with an identity which accordion maker and musician Marc Savoy of Eunice describes in culinary terms: "It's a blend of ingredients, like a gumbo in which different spices and flavors combine to make a new taste." Indeed, like Cajun cooking and culture in general, Cajun music blends elements of American Indian, Scots-Irish, Spanish, German, Anglo-American and Afro-Carribean musics with a rich stock of western French folk traditions.

Most of Louisiana's French population descends from the Acadians, the French colonists who began settling at Port Royal, Acadia in 1604. They remained outside mainstream communication between France and its larger, more important colony, New France, though their isolation was frequently disturbed by the power struggle between the English and French colonial empires.