Music Traditions of New Orleans

Tonight I attended a concert of calypso music by a group of three Costa Ricans playing alonside students from Loyola's music program and much mention was made about the connection New Orleans has to calypso music. Actually, before coming to New Orleans last semester, I tried to familiarize myself with some basic types of music from the city and Calypso was one I came across. It formed as an Afro-Carribean genre on the island of Trinidad, an English-speaking nation, over 100 years ago as a way to spread news throughout the island. And from there, the genre migrated to other Carribean islands, especially to English colonies like Jamaica and the Bahamas, but also to New Orleans and the eastern coast of Central America, as the Costa Rican group proved. The concert was very lively in my opinion and was hard to sit still, but the calypso featured was not what I had familiarized myself with previously. I had known the calypso that used washboards as guitars and boxes as drums, as if the players used whatever they could find as instruments. The musicians tonight had a much more professional, commercial appeal, I thought. Earlier in the day, the percussionist in the band came to my Spanish class to converse with us students and he showed us one instrument he played in the concert that is used in Costa Rica as a form of spreading news like in Trinidad. But this instrument imitates the sounds of birds.
Another genre of music local to New Orleans, or rather the state of Louisiana is cajun music which I have known more to incorporate accordians, fiddles, and banjos. The lyrics are most often in French and the music comes from backcountry Acadiens that, as said in class, were historically looked down upon by urban whites and Creoles.
Both styles have corresponding dance traditions and are unique to this region, as is zydeco music which is a kind of mix between Afro-Carribean and Cajun music. It is more closely associated with New Orleans' Creoles. It includes both washboards and fiddles and developed here in New Orleans as a fusion, rather than something passed down from elsewhere.
And of course the city has legends in jazz and rock and roll music, but I think those are more modern and national forms of music found throughout the US.
Here are some samples I found on youtube because I don't know how to upload music from my computer to this post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2k7YT6D7Q&feature=related
(The first song here talks about tomatoes, just to clarify :) )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19L36mGXLtI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXId-5dYJjE