Born in 1940, Marc Savoy grew up in a rural French-speaking community outside of Eunice, Louisiana, and started playing the accordion at age twelve. By age twenty, he was building and selling his own Acadian-brand Cajun accordions. In 1966, he opened the doors to the iconic Savoy Music Center in his hometown. Today, he is revered as one of the finest builders and players of the instrument in the world. His new book “Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion” is the story of how an instrument once known as the “German-style” accordion became the iconic image of Louisiana’s Cajun culture. (Marc Savoy, 2021)

Most strands of American music have an iconic instrument. Horns for jazz, banjos for bluegrass, and electric guitars for rock and roll, but few invoke the immediate recognition as the accordion found in the wildly unique music of Louisiana Cajuns. Few know the instrument as intimately as world-renowned accordion player, builder, and author, Marc Savoy. Upon seeing a Louisiana-handmade diatonic accordion for the first time in 1957, a teenage Marc Savoy began a quest that arguably no one has come closer to achieving: to build the perfect Cajun accordion. Told in Savoy’s own words, “Made in Louisiana” is the story of the evolution of his Acadian brand accordions—from being a young prodigy to a self-made businessman to a music store owner to a definitive figure in Cajun music.