The sound of the Creole prairie, kept by the day.
Creole Memories is the memory project of Zydeco music and Louisiana and Texas Creole culture — bridging the gap between the traditional, offline Zydeco Nation and the emerging online Zydeco Nation, and laying the foundation for websites like ZydecoOnline.com and organizations like the Zydeco Historical & Preservation Society, Inc.
Our mission
To empower the people who have historically — and presently — defined the Creole culture of Southwest Louisiana and Texas to convey, document and preserve irreplaceable pieces of Zydeco music and Creole heritage: historic structures, oral and musical histories and traditions, and other physical artifacts.
Creole Memories is a platform for discussion, and a means through which information about all aspects of the black Creole history and culture of Southwest Louisiana and Texas is shared. Much of that history lives in dance halls and front rooms, family papers, shoeboxes of photographs, and memories that have never been written down.
The archive files each memory against the calendar day it belongs to — a recording, a dance-hall night, an instrument, an oral history, a photograph, a festival — so that every July 18, or any other day, returns you to what happened on that date. Memories with no fixed year are filed to the day itself, recurring each season.
Where a memory is tied to a place, it is anchored to its town in Louisiana or Texas and plotted on the Story Map, so the music can be followed across the land that made it.
What you’ll find
How it works
Filed by the day
Every memory is indexed by its calendar day across all years, so the archive reads like an almanac — this day in zydeco history.
Anchored to place
Geo-anchored memories are pinned to their Acadiana town and threaded onto the Story Map, from Opelousas to Church Point.
Kept with its source
Each record carries its provenance — the family papers, the label, the recording — so the memory stays tied to where it came from.
Add your piece of Zydeco history.
Help document and preserve Zydeco music and Creole heritage of Southwest Louisiana and Texas — photos, dance flyers, recordings, oral histories and family stories.