The Current Media

I have a silly obsession with a very serious and mysterious tradition in south Louisiana. And I’ve spent late nights, deep in Reddit threads, trying to figure out where the heck The Freeze came from. I’m still trying to understand how it came to be that a Nashville B-side became a line dance craze in Louisiana for generations. Thankfully, I’m not alone. It all started when I’d visited home (Lafayette) for my birthday and wanted to post a video doing The Freeze at a festival on Instagram.

The project to complete I-49 through Lafayette moved a step forward this week, as officials signed off on a draft of a new environmental study, the second in the project’s four-decade history. The supplemental environmental impact statement documents the potential impact of the project on the surrounding area.

Recent outcry over efforts to update University Avenue and Bertrand Drive have highlighted the gaps between what’s promised and what’s delivered when it comes to these kinds of public investments. Lafayette’s been trying to revitalize the stretch of University between Congress Street and I-10 for more than a decade. The promise: a new gateway and increased economic development in a disadvantaged area.

In November 2024, Cashier took to the road for one of their first major tours, hoping to put on a series of shows so gnarly that people would talk about them forever. Instead, on their way to Washington, D.C., they ran into Murphy’s Law-level mishaps that would test the limits of the band’s passion… and probably their safety. They hit a deer and totaled their tour van. None of them qualified for a rental.

Lafayette’s new Northside library will feature an outdoor amphitheater, plenty of green space and a room with 3D printers for hands-on learning. That’s according to the design for the over 20,000-square-foot building, first revealed to the public during a library board meeting Monday night. The library, which will be named after late civil rights leader and former Xavier University President Norman C.

UL Lafayette has stabilized its finances and expects to close fiscal year 2026 with about $3.4 million “in the bank,” . In an upbeat video message and email to employees, Kolluru described what he called the end of the university’s immediate financial crisis but said significant financial challenges remain in the year ahead, including a $26 million projected operating deficit in the next budget. He said the university entered the past fiscal year facing roughly $50 million in debt.

Gwennie von Einsiedel likes to step outside her house and listen to birdsong. For the UL professor, it’s an act of awareness, of noticing. “As an ethnomusicologist, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we hear the world, and I think that as humans, we move through extraordinary sonic environments on a daily basis, but we don’t ever necessarily stop to notice them or to really think about what we’re hearing,” she says.

When Cajun folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet organized the first Tribute to Cajun Music festival at Blackham Coliseum in 1974, he put together a legendary lineup: Jimmy C. Newman, the Balfa Brothers, Clifton Chenier, the Ardoin Family and Blackie Forestier. Still, no one could have predicted the legacy he would create. At the time, Cajun music was still considered “passé” or “old people’s music.” But the show at Blackham helped change that, Ancelet says.

Louisiana has an opportunity to compete for thousands of high-paying jobs in one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: aerospace. While aerospace may be receiving more headlines today, this is not a new conversation for Louisiana. Since 2022, we have worked with aerospace leaders, built workforce partnerships, and helped position Louisiana to compete for the investment and jobs now making front-page news.

By 8 a.m., Kenyon Bias is already sweeping hundreds of white sugar packets and other debris from St. John Street outside St. Joseph Diner, Catholic Charities of Acadiana’s soup kitchen, as dozens of people emerge from tents and sleeping bags packed along the sidewalk. Bias, just a couple of years out of Carencro High School, is the newest Lafayette ambassador, and he is assigned to a 15-block corridor surrounding Catholic Charities’ campus near Downtown.