For hundreds of years in Louisiana, lullabies were hummed, prayers were called, opera was performed, la-las were danced, and work and carnival songs were sung in Creole. A francophone language with connections to West Africa, Louisiana Creole is now one of the most endangered languages in the world. In this musical ethnography, you will find fifteen original and traditional Creole songs that cross time and musical genres such as blues, zydeco, and traditional jazz. African spirits, maroon villages, Congo Square, southwest Louisiana dance halls, and the Northside Skull and Bone Gang all make appearances. Beginning with an introduction to the history and grammar of the language, the accompanying essays include in-depth interviews with Creole speakers and their descendants, as well as photography, original artwork, archival documents, and altars. The book concludes with the Creole lyrics for each song, along with their English translations. Avek ye, vou ve 'koute, lir, chante, epi pale an Creole. (With them, you will listen, read, sing, and speak in Creole.) Includes audio CD of Creole compositions from Louisiana.

Learning to play by ear is a unique part of becoming a musician in New Orleans. This life history and photography project explores the traditional methods of teaching brass band music in the city that gave birth to jazz. Through in-depth interviews, the bands, social and pleasure clubs, schools, churches, and other neighborhood institutions that have supported the music, and the spirit embodied in it, come to life.

Who are the Creoles? The answer is not clear-cut. Of European, African, or Caribbean mixed descent, they are a people of color and Francophone dialect native to south Louisiana; and though their history dates from the late 1600s, they have been sorely neglected in the literature. Creole is a project that both defines and celebrates this ethnic identity. In fifteen essays, writers intimately involved with their subject explore the vibrant yet understudied culture of the Creole people across time—their language, literature, religion, art, food, music, folklore, professions, customs, and social barriers.

The Other Hybrid Archipelago presents the postcolonial literatures of the Francophone Indian Ocean islands to an Anglophone audience. The islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, the Comoros, and the Seychelles form a region that has a particular cultural identity because of the varied mixture of populations that have settled there and the dominant influence of French colonialism. This survey concentrates on the period since the Second World War, when most of the islands achieved independence, except for Reunion and Mayotte, which maintain a regional status within the French Republic. The postcolonial approach suggests certain recurrent themes and preoccupations of the islands' cultures and an appropriate way to define their recent cultural production, while taking account of the burden of their colonial past. The rich cocktail of cultural and linguistic influences surveyed is situated in relation to the contemporary political and social context of the islands and their marginal status within the global economy.

In South Louisiana, we live on a power point of our planet. A place where water comes to be purified. A place where 1,000-year-old cypress trees once grew. A place where fish still come to spawn and birds to nest. A place close to the Gulf of Mexico but where, as the old people used to say, "sweet water" could still be found that was fresh and good to drink. There is no sweet water down the bayou in Terrebonne Parish anymore. I've been trying to make sense of the strange beauty left here—the magic that is entangled in the ugliest underbelly of a plantation economy surrendered to the petro-chemical industry. Against this landscape, I see my Houma cousins coming back to Pointeaux-Chenes on the weekends and my jardin sauvage on Bayou Road. I see indigenous and métis people reclaiming New Orleans' original name, Bulbancha. I remind myself of my grandmother's story of her aunt who still crossed the Mississippi River every day in a pirogue. I see connections of unexpected, non-coincidental, life-affirming experiences that fuse the stories of our ancestors with our hopes and prayers for a better future.