To be, or not be Cajun,
Ca c’est la question.

Whether ’tis nobler in the heart suffer to
The taunts and temptations of the terrified world,

Or, to take accordion and fiddle
Against a nauseous sea of mainstream culture,
And by being Cajun, ignore it.

To fiddle, to dance, to dance,
Perchance to eat boudin.
Oui, c’est ca--

For in that song of dancing boudin,
What wild rhythms there arise?

When we have shuffled off our
Sausage skin, must give us pause...

For who would bear the pathetic joke of pop radio?
The rock star’s hairdo?
The music industry’s delay?
The insolence of record labels
and the turns that music mixed
with commerce takes?

When he himself might his own music make,
With his father’s fiddle?

Who would criticize that man
Who groans and swears beneath
His weary job--

But that the promise
of a song played sweetly on a porch,

The rediscovered song of home, to
Whose warm body all travelers return,

Puzzles the ambition, and makes us
rather love that boudin that we have,
Than bother with that boudin which we know not of.

Thus our conscience does make Cajuns of us all,
And the native hue of bayou and prairie

Is embodied anew as two-step and waltz,
Inspiring us with great joy and rhythm,

As we lose our inhibitions
And all together scream--

Aie-Yeeeeeee.