Helping Save Louisiana French.

Jonathan Abrams reports for the NY Times (archived) about a worthy attempt at preservation: While relaxing a couple of years ago, Prof. Joshua Caffery found himself in the mood to unwind with some old-time Cajun music. He asked Amazon’s Alexa to play selections from Dewey Balfa, a celebrated fiddler and singer credited with popularizing the genre. Instead, Alexa frustratingly steered him to the catalog of the modern pop artist, Dua Lipa, Caffery said. “I love Dua Lipa,” said Caffery, the director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “Don’t get me wrong. But it seems problematic if you’re interested in a different kind of culture and you want to surround yourself with the music of your region. That, to some degree, is threatening my hold on these things I love.” Louisiana French, the oral dialect of which Balfa was a cultural guardian, is part of the Bayou’s societal DNA, a link to its history, music and identity. Today, Caffery described the…