60 Minutes - 08/31/2025: China Spies, St. Mary’s, Sounds of Cajun Country

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Chinese hackers have infiltrated U.S. government systems, the private sector and critical infrastructure, but hacking has not replaced Beijing’s pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence, aka: spying. Norah O’Donnell reports on Chinese covert agents who monitor and influence events outside their own borders and surveil and intimidate Chinese dissidents right here in America. Correspondent Bill Whitaker visits New Orleans, where two high school seniors solved a mathematical puzzle that was thought to be impossible for 2,000 years. Whitaker speaks to the students, their families and the teachers at their school, St. Mary’s Academy, which has been fostering academic excellence and boundless possibilities for its student body of African American girls since the end of the Civil War. Correspondent Jon Wertheim visits southwest Louisiana, where the sounds of Cajun and zydeco music – long the soundtrack in this singular pocket of America – are experiencing a remarkable revival. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. What has this 76-year-old retired historian been doing in the United States? Were you spying for the Chinese government? According to U.S. intelligence, he was part of a massive network of covert agents, recruited by China to spy for its Ministry of State Security.

This is in scale and in scope and in brazenness. the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history. So are you math geniuses? Not at all. How did these high school students prove an ancient mathematical equation that was thought to be impossible for 2,000 years? We start with just a regular right triangle where the angle in the corner is 90 degrees.

Then we start creating similar but smaller right triangles, and then it continues for infinity. Am I going a little, too? You've been beyond me since the beginning. You need no passport to enter Cajun country, but it's an exotic land like nowhere else. Home to a cuisine, a language, a landscape, even a pacing all its own.

And then there's the singular sound. What defines the Cajun sound? Typically, Cajun music has Cajun accordion, Fiddle, sung in Cajun French. It's laid two-step in waltzes. It's got a very unique rhythm, a syncopated rhythm that you don't hear a lot of other kinds of music.

It's a syncopation that drives the music. And it has a hauntingness about it, the music. And it just got soul, you know. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonci. I'm John Wertheim.

I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelly. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work,

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Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. According to the latest assessment from America's intelligence agencies, China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to the U.S. Its hackers have infiltrated the U.S. government, the private sector, and critical infrastructure, like water systems and power grids. Hacking, however, has not replaced Beijing's pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence. As we first reported in May, China's Communist Party remains intent on leveraging a worldwide network of covert agents to monitor and influence events outside its own borders, and to survey and intimidate Chinese dissidents right here in America. Tonight, you'll hear about why China spies are on the rise and what happens when one gets caught.

This is in scale and in scope and in brazenness the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history. Jim Lewis is a former U.S. diplomat whose direct experience with China's intelligence agencies spans more than 30 years. He says since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China's spies no longer seem to fear the U.S. Why do China's espionage efforts appear to be growing so big, so fast under Xi Jinping?

Xi Jinping thinks it's China's time to move to the center of the world stage. Xi Jinping looks at the West and at the U.S. and says these people are feeble-minded. and I'm going to be able to beat them. It may not be a household name in the U.S., but according to Lewis, China's Ministry of State Security or MSS is now the largest and most active spy agency in the world. In a propaganda video, the spy agency posted last year on China's largest social network, a voiceover boasts that the MSS senses things before they happen and fights against evil. The slick production is a public message to both foreign adversaries and China's own citizens

about the ministry's growing power. It's sort of the equivalent of the CIA, but it has much greater powers. One estimate says the MSS might have 600,000 employees, and they are committed to going after the United States. We are target number two for them. Who's target number one? Target number one is China's own people. When Xi Jinping, He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. He's really worried that the Chinese Communist Party was on the path that the Soviet Communist Party was on. Lewis says to maintain absolute power at home, President Xi looks abroad. Xi Jinping probably remembers that a lot of revolutions start outside the home country,

and he doesn't want that to happen to China. So there's a huge effort to pay attention to the expatriate population. One way Beijing paid attention, according to the FBI, was to secretly open an overseas Chinese police station right in the middle of New York City. It was discovered in 2022, hidden among businesses in a commercial building in Manhattan's Chinatown. While Chinese expats could renew government documents there

like driver's licenses, federal prosecutors said the main purpose of the outpost was to target and harass China. dissidents. They've done it in the Netherlands, they've done it in Canada, but the idea that you'd open a police station in another country, that's a signal disrespect of the sovereignty of that nation. After the station was shut down, two Chinese Americans who allegedly opened it were charged with conspiracy to act as unregistered foreign agents of China.

In total, over the last five years, the Department of Justice has indicted more than one 140 people for felonies related to harassment, hacking, and spying for China within the U.S. And one of the accused worked for the governor of New York. Federal prosecutors allege a former top aide to Kathy Hochle named Linda Sun accepted millions of dollars to influence who the governor met with and what she said about China. Sun and her husband, who have pled not guilty, owned a multi-measurer. million-dollar home on Long Island and a condo in Hawaii. Having a Ferrari in two multi-million dollars is a bad idea.

For a government employee. Everyone leaves a record. Some records are more flamboyant than others. Flamboyant is not a word that comes to mind when you meet Shu Jun Wong. The 76-year-old retired historian came to the U.S. from China in 1994 as a visiting scholar at Columbia University. In New York, home to more exiled Chinese activists than any other city in the world, Wong helped found a group that met regularly and was dedicated to democracy in China.

In the 2010s, the overseas democracy movement was gaining momentum, and I was eager to be a part of it and promote democracy. What was your specific role in the pro-democracy community in Flushing Queens? I was assigned the role of Vice President, Secretary General for publicity and events, all kinds of events. While Xu Jun Wang became a trusted member of the Chinese dissident community here in New York, he kept another role secret. For almost 20 years, he was spying for China's Ministry of State Security. Did you take notes about who attended these meetings and what they said? Yes.

When did you start sharing that information with China's largest intelligence group? That is a very big misunderstanding. In 2002, Xu Zhong Wang was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for sharing dissidents' names, contact information, and private conversations at the direction of the MSS for 17 years. When we spoke with him in February through an interpreter, He was at times combative and disputed basic facts of his case. So we eventually asked Mr. Wong, point blank.

Were you spying for the Chinese government? No. Throughout the entire trial, they were very careful. They never used the word spy. Just look at the record, and you'll see that. We did. And while lying to 60 minutes may not be a crime, lying to the FBI is. Mr. Wong repeatedly told federal agents he had no contact with the Ministry of State Security.

But according to federal prosecutors, he met with these MSS officers in China, and they offered him plane tickets and helped his family with a business dispute. In 2021, someone claiming to be from the MSS showed up at Mr. Wong's door to help delete communications from his computer that might incriminate him. Video from the encounter showed he welcomed the man's help. Unfortunately for Mr. Wong, the Chinese operative was actually an undercover FBI agent. Mr. Wong had pled not guilty. Last August, he was convicted of making false statements, illegally possessing democracy activist's identification, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China.

Our position has always been that he never had the intent to be an agent of the Chinese government. Mr. Wong's lawyers, Zachary Margulis Onama and Kevin Tong, admit their client was in touch with Chinese intelligence. But they argue he didn't break the law and claim FBI agents went after him once they were unable to recruit him for the U.S. They were hoping he would roll over and identify handlers higher up the food chain. no, he did not do so. And they felt a little vindictive and angry and frustrated about their inability to stop

higher up actual espionage, and they turned him into this fall guy. But when you look at the reality, he didn't have any access to secret, top secret information. All he passed over is the attendance sheet of the democracy movement. Those information are available in public. People's names that attend a private event are not public. They're only made public. Can we home in on that? There's no evidence of any harm to the United States' interests

or to democracy movement interests from anything that he did. Democracy! Anna Young Chung disagrees. She testified against Mr. Wong in court. The pro-democracy activist's name and contact information, along with 63 others, was found in Mr. Wong's luggage when he returned to New York from a trip. to China in 2019.

Did you ever imagine that Mr. Wong was one of the people who was reporting what you were doing and others back to China? Not at all. Did you lose sleep over it? Yeah, and I also make sure my door chain was on all the time at night, because you never know. Born in Hong Kong, Ms. Yong Chung is now a U.S. citizen

and professor of biology. She organizes demonstrations for the Hong Kong democracy movement in the U.S., where she's become increasingly wary of who might be watching. I believe they are collecting information. What kind of information? Like, what are we doing, exactly what we are saying in the protests, how many people are showing up there, things like that. And collecting that information for whom?

For Beijing. Why do you think China goes to such lengths to spy on pros, democracy activists here in the U.S. This is their tactics, right? They try to silence you, harass you, or intimidate you, so that you stop what you're doing. They want to cripple me and cripple my ability to advocate for Hong Kong. Anna Kwok now runs the pro-democracy organization that Anna Yangtung co-founded. Because of her outspoken activism, the Hong Kong government has placed a $130,000

dollar bounty on her head. So every single day I wake up, I open my social media, and then I would see people talking about how if I keep talking here in the United States, they will come kidnap me and take my body to the Chinese consulate so that they can send me back to China. How are you viewed by the Chinese government? If I do go back to Hong Kong, it's going to be life imprisonment. So basically they see me as a traitor, as someone who betrays the Chinese government and the Hong Kong government.

And what's the crime you've committed? They think that fighting for democracy, wanting a say in our own future is a crime. The United States is known as the land of the free. Do you feel free here? Honestly, with China's long-arm repression, it's difficult to feel free anywhere in the world. The thing about the Chinese government is that you can leave the country, you can leave the territory, but you can never actually leave their governance. After we met her, Anna Kwok's father and brother were arrested in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong. She is currently seeking political asylum in the U.S. In March, the Trump administration announced sanctions against officials in Hong Kong who have targeted her and 18 other prominent activists living abroad. As for Shu Jun Wong, on April 14th, a federal judge sentenced him to three years supervised release. He spared Mr. Wong prison time because of health problems, including cognitive decline. But the judge reiterated, he's He had committed serious crimes against the U.S. He was an agent. He worked with the Chinese government to identify targets for them to surveil and compromise. According to China analyst Jim Lewis, there's still no substitute for on-the-ground human intelligence, even if Mr. Wong was an expendable asset for China's top spy agency. Not exactly James Bond. not James Bond. Definitely not. That's the scary part though, is that the Chinese are very good.

And so he was not number one on the list of assets to protect. That means there are other assets who are being protected. Pumpkin is here at Starbucks and we're making it just the way you like. Handcrafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce and rich espresso sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on

business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit td.com Small Business Advice to find out more or to match with a TD Small Business Banking Account Manager. For many of the high school students returning to class, it may seem like geometry and trigonometry were created by the Greeks as a form of torture. So imagine our amazement when we heard two high school seniors had proved a mathematical puzzle that was thought to be impossible for 2,000 years. We met Kelsey Johnson and Nicaia Jackson at their all-girls Catholic high school in New Orleans, and as we first reported last year, we expected to find two mathematical prodigies. Instead, we found at St. Mary's Academy, all students are told their possibilities are boundless. Come Mardi Gras season, New Orleans is a lie.

with colorful parades, replete with floats and beads and high school marching bands. In a city where uniqueness is celebrated, St. Mary's stands out, with young African-American women playing trombones and tubas, twirling batons and dancing, doing it all. Which defines St. Mary's students told us. Junior Christina Blazio says the school instills in them

they have the ability to accomplish anything. That is kind of a standard here. So we aim very high. Like, our aim is excellence for all students. The private Catholic elementary and high school sits behind the sisters of the Holy Family Convent in New Orleans East. The academy was started by an African-American nun for young black women just after the Civil War.

The convent still supports the school with the help of alumni. In December 2022, seniors Nakaya Jackson and Kelsey Johnson, were working on a school-wide math contest that came with a cash prize. I was motivated because there was a monetary incentive because I was like $500 is a lot of money, so I would like to at least try. Both were staring down the thorny bonus question. So tell me, what was this bonus question? It was to create a new proof of the Pythagorean theorem,

and it kind of gave you a few guidelines on how would you start a proof. how would you start a proof? The seniors were familiar with the Pythagorean theorem, a fundamental principle of geometry. You may remember it from high school, A squared plus B squared equal C squared. In plain English, when you know the lengths of two sides of a right triangle,

you can figure out the length of the third. Both had studied geometry and some trigonometry, and both told us math was not easy. What no one told them was there had been more than 300 documented proofs of the Pythagorean theorem using algebra and geometry. But for 2,000 years, a proof using trigonometry was thought to be impossible. And that was the bonus question facing them. When you looked at the question, did you think, boy, this is hard? Yeah. Yeah. What motivated you to say, well, I'm going to try this? I think I was like, I started something. I need to

finish it. So you just kept on going? Yeah. For two months that winter, they spent almost all their free time working on the proof. She was like, Mom, this is a little bit too much. Cece and Cal Johnson are Kelsey's parents. So then I started looking at what she really was doing, and it was pages and pages and pages of like over 20 or 30 pages for this one problem. Yeah, the garbage scam was full of papers where she would, you know, work out the problems. If that didn't work, she had bothered it up through in the trash. Did you look at the problem? Naliska Jackson is Nakaya's mother.

Personally, I did not, because most of the time I don't understand what she's doing. What if we did this? What if I write this? Does this help? A-X-square. Their math teacher, Michelle Blue and Williams, initiated the math contest. And did you think anyone would solve it? Well, I wasn't necessarily looking for a solve, so no idea.

What were you looking for? I was just looking for some ingenuity, you know. Kalsi and Nakaya delivered on that. They tried to explain their groundbreaking work to 60 minutes. Kalsi's proof is appropriately titled The Waffle Cone. So to start the proof, we start with just a regular right triangle where the angle in the corner is 90 degrees, and the two angles are alpha and beta.

So then what we do next is we draw a second congruent, which means they're equal in size. But then we start creating similar but smaller right triangles going in a pattern like this, and then it continues for infinity, and eventually it creates this larger waffle cone shape. Am I going a little too? Yeah, you've been beyond me since the beginning.

So how did you figure out the proof? Okay, so we have a right triangle, 90 degree angle, alpha and beta. Then what did you do? Okay. I have a right triangle inside of the circle, and I have a perpendicular bicepter at O.P. To divide the triangle to make that small right triangle. And that's basically what I use for the proof.

That's the proof. That's what I call amazing. Well, thank you. There had been one other documented proof of the theorem using trigonometry by mathematician Jason Zimba in 2009, won in 2,000 years. Now, it seems, Nakaya and Kalsi have joined perhaps the most exclusive club in mathematics.

So you both independently came up with proof that only use trigonometry. Yes. So are you math geniuses? I think that's a stretch. If not genius, you're really smart at math. Not at all. To document Kalsi and Nakaya's work, math teachers at St. Mary submitted their proofs to an American Mathematical Society conference in Atlanta in March 2023.

Well, our teacher approached us and was like, hey, you might be able to actually present this. I was like, are you joking? But she wasn't. So we went, I got up there, we presented, and it went well, and it blew up. It blew up. Yeah. What was the blow up? Like, insane, unexpected, crazy, honestly.

Today's story features two high school students, Kelsey Johnson and Nakia Jackson. It took millennia to prove, but just a minute for word of their accomplishment to go around the world. They got a write-up in South Korea and a shout-out from former First Lady Michelle Obama, a commendation from the governor, and keys to the city of New Orleans. Why do you think so many people found what you did to be so impressive? Probably because we're African-American, one, and we're also women. So I think, oh, in our age, of course, our age has probably played a big part. So you think people were surprised that young African-American women could do such a thing?

Yeah, definitely. I'd like to actually be celebrated for what it is. Like, it's a great mathematical achievement. Achievement, that's a word you hear often around St. Mary's Academy. Kalsi and Nekiah follow a long line of barrier-breaking graduates. The late queen of Creole cooking, Leah Chase, was an alum. So was the first African-American female New Orleans police chief, Michelle Woodfork. And judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Dana Douglas.

Math teacher Michelle Blue and Williams told us, Kalsi and Nakaya, are typical St. Mary's students. They're not unicorns. Oh, no. No. If they are unicorns, then every single lady that has matriculated through this school is a beautiful black unicorn. Pamela Rogers, St. Mary's president and interim principal, told us the students hear that message from the moment they walk in the door. We believe all students can succeed. All students can learn. It does not matter the environment that you live in. So when word went out that two of your students had solved this almost impossible math problem, were they universally applauded? In this community, they were greatly applauded.

Across the country, there were many naysayers. What were they saying? They were saying, oh, they could not have done it. African Americans don't have the brains to do it. Of course, we sheltered our girls from that, but we absolutely did not expect it to come in the that it came. And after such a wonderful achievement. People have a vision of who can be successful.

And to some people, it is not always an African American female. And to us, it's always an African American female. What we know is when teachers lay out some expectations that say, You can do this. Kids will work as hard as they can to do it. Gloria Ladson Billings, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, has studied how best to teach African-American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.

And what's the difference, say, between having a teacher like that and a whole school dedicated to the, excellence of these students. So a whole school is almost like being in heaven. What do you mean by that? Many of our young people have their ceilings lowered. That somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, their thoughts are, I'm not going to be anything special.

What I think is probably happening at St. Mary's is young women come in as perhaps ninth graders in our toll, here's what we expect to happen. And here's how we're going to help you get there. Who is the author of this story? At St. Mary's, half the students get scholarships, subsidized by fundraising to defray the $9,000 a year tuition. Here, there's no test to get in, but expectations are high and rules are strict. No cell phones, modest skirts, hair must be its natural color. Students, Raya Sadiq, Summer Ford, Carissa Washington, Tatum Williams,

and Christina Blasio told us they appreciate the rules and rigor. Especially the standards that they set for us. They're very high, and I don't think that's ever going to change. So is there a heart of philosophy and essence to St. Mary's? The sisterhood. The sisterhood? Yes. And you don't mean the nuns.

You mean... I mean you. So when you're here, there's just no question that you're going to go on to college. College is all they talk about. And Arizona State University. Principal Rogers announces to her 615 students the colleges where every senior has been accepted. So for 17 years, you've had a 100% graduation rate

and a 100% college acceptance rate. That's correct. Nakaya Jackson. When Nakaya and Kalsi graduated, all their classmates went to college and got scholarships. Nakaya got a full ride to the pharmacy school

at Xavier University in New Orleans. Kalsi, the class valedictorian, is studying environmental engineering at Louisiana State University. So wait a minute. Neither one of you is going to pursue a career in math. No, no. I may take up a minor in math,

but I don't want that to be my job job. Yeah. People might expect too much out of me if I would call a mathematician. But math is not completely in their rearview mirrors. Last fall, their high school proofs were published after final peer review. They've now submitted further proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. Since their first two...

We found five, and then we found a general format that could potentially produce at least five additional proofs. And you're not math geniuses? No. No. I'm not buying it. The idea that this country has become one big, bland conformist culture, the United States of generica. Well, if you're in search of a counterpoint, hang out as we did in the marshy interior of southern Louisiana.

You need no passport to enter Cajun country, but it's an exotic land like nowhere else, home to a cuisine, a language, a landscape, even a pacing all its own. And then there's the singular sound. Cajun music and its cousin from across the way Zydeco resists easy description. But it is intoxicatingly catchy, often sung in French, and as we first reported earlier this year, enjoying a most unlikely renaissance. The sun is out when living is easy on the bayous of Louisiana. The fish are jumping.

Those are carp, and the cypress trees grow high. On dry land, the music hangs in the humidity. In Eunice, Louisiana, the Savoy family has lived on this patch of land for eight generations. Music is often a family inheritance down here, and you can think of the Savoas as the Von Trapp clan of Cajun country, Acadiana as it's known. Joel is a Grammy-winning producer and musician. often accompanied by his brother Wilson, also a Grammy winner. Their father, Mark, an accordion maker by day, is a prominent musician in his own right, as is their mother Anne, who once recorded with Linda Ronstadt.

What defines the Cajun sound? Typically, Cajun music has Cajun accordion, fiddle sung in Cajun French. They've played two-step and waltzes. It's got a very unique rhythm, very syncopated rhythm, you don't hear a lot of other kinds of music. It's a syncopation that drives the music. And it has a hauntingness about it, the music. And it just got soul, you know.

These sounds are sourced from the unique blend of people that converged on Cajun country over the centuries. Music is obviously born out of this swirl of different cultures. The accordion arrived with some part of the population. Fiddle arrived with a different part of the population. The syncopation comes from people that we encountered here, the African Americans, the Creoles, the Spanish, things like that.

It's also a social music. You know, anytime there's music, there's somebody hanging out, somebody cooking. These things just are part of life. It's always inclusive. Maybe you'll dance a few times. Who knows? As we saw, when the sun sets in Acadiana, the volume turns way up. This music is the soundtrack in dive-bri-bours in nightclubs, in nightclubs,

and the old French Saldadans dance halls that studs this landscape that stud this landscape. And while it's not topping billboard charts, the music is experiencing a resurgence as young audiences two-step once again, to those accordions, fiddles, and washboards. You say Louisiana, the first thing you can come out of their mind is, how's New Orleans? I'm like, I don't know. I don't live in New Orleans. I live in South West Louisiana.

Totally different sounds. A total different sound. Chubby Carrier is a Grammy-winning accordionist from Church Point, Louisiana. He tours with his group, the Bayou Swamp Band. Chubby Zidico is a relative of Cajun music, born out of the French-speaking black Creole community. One time, this couple came goes, honey, you gotta come see this. That's a black gentleman with an accordion in his hand. I wonder if you played poker, honey.

Oh, poker? Oh, you had a surprise for him. Oh, my goodness, and I see that, and they came back. And when I seen them sitting there, I said, watch this. It's time to dance with me tonight, y'all. I started playing my songs, and she started looking over to her husband, going, wow, this is great. She just doing this.

She thought she was coming for Laura's well. Something like that. Who! Jordan Tibido is the front band of the touring band Le Rue d'Eur. It's just the sounds of our community. And I think that just barriers into your heart when you're little. And it's not some hipster, ironic thing.

No. Most of the people that'd be in these kind of dances are as far removed from a hip as you could possibly imagine. Jordan is Cajun music's equivalent of a rock star. And through his music, he's become something of a global ambassador for Cajun country and its way of life. You've just saying, you say a lot that's in some of your song lyrics. You want to tell us what it is?

You live your culture or to do your culture. There's no de milieu. It means you either live your culture or you kill your culture. There's no in between. What do you mean? You see this vanishing of cultures, of dialects, of everything to just create this one generic

human, you know? And it's really sad to me. So I'm going to get up every day and I'm going to live my culture today. I think it's every individual's responsibility to maintain who they are as a people. Time was Louisiana French could be heard on every street corner, both in Cajun and Creole communities.

Jordan learned French from his grandmother. But today, the language is dwindling as the march of Americanization proceeds. Imagine still being home and saying, oh, I miss home. It's a very hard feeling to convey. I wonder if the language is diminishing the Cajun music becomes that much more important as this transmitter of culture. Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt, there are countless kids who are learning the language just from the music.

The Cajun story starts in Nova Scotia, where this French-speaking people led a peaceful life until they didn't. In the middle of the 1700s, the conquering British kicked out the Acadians, shortened to Cajuns. Expelled, they found an improbable home amid the backwaters of French Louisiana, from the Craggy North Atlantic to the delta and bayous of the Echafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in North America. Jordan gave us a tour of the land that shaped his Cajun ancestors. They adapted to survive and then thrive in this new and sometimes hostile environment.

Did I hear right, you learn to swim in this water? Yeah. Oh, yeah, my mama, they would take the kids, they'd put us some lifejacket and throw us out the boat to go swim so they could fish in peace, you know? and she'd make the turn if you'd see an alligator. Mama, they got an alligator. You can see him? Yes, ma'am. Then it's fine.

If you can't see them no more, let me know. The Cajuns didn't come with much, but they did bring their old French melodies. We sing a lot fishing. When we're sitting fish, me and my little girl, my youngest, she likes to sit and sing. So while we're fishing, she sings to the fish to get them to come. Long as he brought up fish,

well, there's an unwritten rule in Cajun country. you can't have the music without the food. Joel Savois and his family invited us into their kitchen. We're cooking some shrimp et tufei. Et tufeis is a French word that means smothered. So we smothered them. Where did you learn from your folks? Yeah.

A lot of people say, what's the recipe? I said, I don't know what the recipe is. New York, you can go into a Michelin Star restaurant and they've got et tufei and gumbo. Yeah, but it's not the same. Not the same. They don't know what they're doing. I propose a toast to my grandmother who lived in this house

and with her lack of gentility, she would always say, I read the bajoulet, I sit down, and let's stuff ourselves. There you go. Here. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

The music, the food, the drink, the Bon Tom, the good times. These traditions braid all the communities here, but with slight twists. Chubby carriers, shabby carriers. father and grandfather were sharecroppers who played music at night. He showed us the difference between the blues-heavy zydeco he grew up with in the more country-infused Cajun sound. So I took one of my grandfather's song. Now you see, I did all my zadical.

That's a zadical sound. Now watch your waltz. Take it to the Cajun. You hear that? Then I take that same song and then I'll speed it up. It's going to turn into a Zadico song. Whoa. All in one, brother.

Though entwined musically for decades, the black Zydeco and the white Cajun scenes couldn't mingle much in the Jim Crow Deep South. We first met Chubby at La Pousier, The Dust, a dance hall in the town of Bro Bridge. He remembers when black bands, and patrons weren't allowed in. I wonder if you thought about what your dad and your grandpa

would have been thinking watching you play this venue where they wouldn't have been playing. I mean, we can't even step in that club. Like, daddy and my grandfather, I want to say this. They fought the fight for us, man. Daddy and granddaddy is in heaven looking down and going, my son is playing at a white venue that I never thought in the many years

that I would ever, ever see. But how good it is, how sweet it is, huh? Woo! Today, the Cajun and Zytoll So crowd overlap like never before. The music has found new audiences with new sensibilities. It feels like a train moving. Like virtually all the musicians we interviewed, little Nate Williams has seen a surge in popularity.

Last year, his streaming audience jumped by, get this, more than 3,000 percent. How do you describe your style of Zyteco? It's not traditional, is it? Very much not traditional, man. It's a fusion, that's how I think of it. Keyboard, synthesizers, a lot of R&B. A lot of R&B. Nate learned to play from his father,

also a renowned Zidica musician, and he's found pushing musical boundaries is not always frictionless. What's dad say about this? My dad has always been encouraging. But I could see his face sometimes, you know. We'll sit down in the studio. He'll look at me and listening to my stuff, can we put some more accordion in there?

Can we put some more French in there? Can we put this in there? But at the end of the day, you know, we come to some compromising, understanding that this is you, this is me. In the music, has struck a chord beyond Louisiana. Jordan's band tours across the country and internationally. We met Jordan, Joelle, and Wilson after they'd played a pack show in the red-hooked neighborhood of Brooklyn, of all places. The band, like us, ponderes what precisely is fueling this interest outside Louisiana. They don't speak French, they're not getting the lyrics.

What are they connecting to? I wonder that all the time. I really just believe it's the emotion. If we play and I'm happy, we cut up and you can see and feel that good time, you're going to feel that good time. Same thing, if the song's horribly sad, maybe it makes you feel a little sad. little sadness inside you, and you connect on that emotional level. Emotional connection. To a sound that, like the accordion itself, can contract and expand, old melodies in a new era.

True music. It's emotive. You're going to feel it. And that's... Sure. Everybody wants to feel something. 60 minutes will be off for the next two weeks, but next Sunday, tune into Sunday morning for my wide-ranging conversation with Justice Amy Coney-Barritt. We spoke at her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, in her first television interview since she joined the Supreme Court five years ago. And maybe the court doesn't always get it right,

and people may agree or disagree with how the court resolves any individual case, but it is always the law that matters. I'm Nora O'Donnell. We'll be back September 21st with another edition of 60 Minutes.