I grew up in South Louisiana, in Lake Charles to be exact. It's on the western edge of Acadiana, the collection of parishes (or counties for you non-Louisianians) that comprise the Cajun region of Louisiana. LC is close enough to Texas to be considered that by many, but we still get a shoutout on every KRVS station ID. Even though I was a suburban kid, I spent a lot of time in the bayou with my dad’s family. My grandma grew up in a rural French community in Calcasieu Parish south of Lake Charles. She was proud of her French language, Catholic religion, and foodways. She could also make a mean jambalaya. However, she bristled at the term Cajun. She and my Grandpa may have fallen in love two-stepping to Cajun tunes, but she was French, and not Cajun!

My maternal grandpa had a similar outlook to the extent that he cared much about that stuff. In reality he cared more about John Wayne and bass fishing, than his French lineage, but he did have it. His mother came from a prominent Acadian (Cajun) family in colonial Louisiana. She’s documented right in the family tree displayed prominently in their historic home turned museum. Yet, when my Grandpa talked about his heritage, he was quick to point out that his family was French, and not Cajun. Heritage is important in Louisiana. I’ve been drawn to it as an adult. My French grandparents were absolutely Cajuns despite their protests to the contrary. Their gumbos, crawfish boils, fishing and hunting, as well as their love of life, family, and Louisiana are all evidence of that. However, when they were kids, to be called a Cajun was a slur, to speak French in public was punishable by violence, and to be anything other than American after World War II was unthinkable.

My parents' generation lost the chance to grow up immersed in that culture. So did my generation. That’s what I thought until around 2012 when I heard about the young cajun music scene in Lafayette. I was rather late to that party, but it inspired Roots of Fire. When I was in high school, liking cajun music was not cool. When I left Louisiana for the Bay Area in 2002, there wasn’t a thought in my head about preserving my culture. Yet, like a lot of other cajuns in the diaspora, I yearned for the smells, tastes, and rhythms of my homeland. For some of us, it takes leaving Louisiana to know what we left behind.

It took me over a decade to find myself living in Louisiana again, this time in New Orleans. Now I’m not an angsty teen looking to leave the South. I’m a father raising a little Nola girl less than half a mile from where her great-grandpa grew up. I want her stomping through the marshes of Cameron Parish, pulling up crawfish traps with her grandpa like I did with mine. I want her to know about her French Louisiana heritage and why it’s still important. I didn’t grow up loving cajun music, but my grandparents did, and now so do I. I want to reclaim that heritage using the best tool I have at my disposal, storytelling. My goal is to learn and share, while teaching others why they should love Louisiana like I do. Roots of Fire is about a flaming resurgence of music and culture that has been burning all along just beneath the surface.