Accordionist Bruce Daigrepont is a fixture on the New Orleans Cajun music scene. Indeed, many credit him as being the scene, or, at least, carrying the genre’s flag for decades across the Crescent City. 

In 1980 the 22-year-old Daigrepont began a weekly Cajun fais do-do (dance party) on Thursday nights at the Maple Leaf Bar. At the time, it was just about the only Cajun music in town.

In 1986, Daigrepont moved the party to Sundays at Tipitina’s, and those late afternoons evolved into a weekly tradition and a beacon for the Cajun dance community that lasted thirty years. Daigrepont called it quits in 2016, but returned to Tips in 2019 for shows on a monthly basis.  

Daigrepont’s family hailed from Avoyelles Parish, on the edge of the Cajun prairie, and his parents migrated into New Orleans for the jobs that were plentiful after WWII. However, the young Bruce, who started playing guitar and singing with his family as a child, was fascinated by the Cajun French language and heritage, and became an advocate at an early age.

Daigrepont composes much of his material, and stands out as one of the more prolific Cajun French songwriters of our time. He and his band, which includes bassist Jim Markway, fiddler Gina Forsyth, and drummer Mike Barras, tour heavily, serving as ambassadors for Louisiana and Cajun music. He’s performed at Wolf Trap, Lincoln Center, and major venues around the world, as well as on tours supported by the U.S. State Department and the embassies of foreign countries.

When he’s not on tour, Daigrepont can be heard regularly at The Bayou Club/Tropical Isle on Bourbon Street with the Cajun Drifters, which also includes Kevin Aucoin on drums, Mike Dupuy on bass, and John Dowden on fiddle.