[tshiggins]

Question 32
What cultural influences are in Louisiana? I can't figure out if its strongly French or strongly British. What kind of music and food reign king? what ethnic groups are most common?

Answer to Q32

The Culture of the Louisiana Confederacy varies from one region to the next. In the area around New Orleans, where many French Arcadians remained even after the area's successful conquest by the British Ontarries, music and cuisine very much retains its French folk influence. Music is made with mandolins, guitars and concertinas, along with washboard percussion, combined with small drums and tambourines, and resembles an early form of zydeco.

Music in areas with concentrations of black freedmen and "indentured servants" featured soulful gospel music, played with guitars, banjos, wooden flutes and whatever percussion they can find or make up. Bongo drums are quite common, as well, due to constant contact between the southern Lousiana Confederacy, and the Caribbean nations. A version of sorrowful secular music has also begun to appear, based on gospel music and back-beat rhythms remembered from African ancestry, and this has begun to be called "blues."

Further north, the Lousiana Confederacy loses its French and African-American character, and the inland areas closely resemble traditional British folk culture. Violins, mandolins and woodwinds entertain people, while percussion is not nearly so prevalent. Up in the northeast coastal areas, local culture strongly resembles the seaport cultures of Great Britain, and the folk music features sea chanties, sailor ballads and other sorts of songs, as well as a healthy dollop of Irish traditional tunes of all sorts.

Further south along the east coast, French influences are actively avoided, due to lingering memories of the wars and the fact that local areas lack the wealth of New Orleans, the northeast, or the breadbasket areas of the Mississippi basin and the southern shores of the Great Lakes. Music and cuisine are strongly based on British folk culture, and the people there have traditionally resisted external influences, although that has begun to change.

(All of this describes the local popular culture, and describes the sort of music one would hear in a local tavern on a Friday or Saturday night, or at a country dance or other such event. Wealthier areas feature such high-cultural offerings as Shakespeare plays, symphonies and even ballet and opera, although not to the extent the early 20th Century did in our time. The wealth of the Louisiana Confederacy, although steadily increasing at a decent clip, still cannot compare to the Guilded Age of the United States, in our timeline.)

Of the four main cultural areas, most outsiders consider the New Orleans culture set the most vibrant, due to the wide range of influences and cross-fertilization between different cultural groups. The food from the area is also considered the best in the Confederacy, although the seafood cuisine of the northeast is quite popular, as well.

Question 35
What is the current status of Spain, and what are its relationships with the Spanish-speaking areas of Latin America?