All music, to a greater or lesser extent, is the result of the fusion -- intersection and overlapping -- of prior influences, themes, and even forms of instrumentation with current musical and cultural creations. In my research on Louisiana Cajun music and the Afro-Caribbean musical form known as zydeco, I have been impressed by the many instances of fusion both in the music and the dance. This trend reflects at once global diversity at work within a particular cultural idiom and the effect of global Anglophone culture on musical practices that were once strictly francophone. In this talk, I discuss the complex forms of mixing, blending, and fusion in zydeco, overlapping of forms that I consider as a kind of hybridity providing a source of renewal in this musical tradition as well as constituting a locus of controversy about tradition and innovation. In the presentation, after briefly introducing zydeco with an excerpt from the king of zydeco, Clifton Chenier, I provide several excerpted examples that show how the 1990s generation of zydeco musicians - the so-called "nouveau zydeco" group, notably, Keith Frank, Chris Ardoin, Sean Ardoin, Lil' Brian Terry and the Zydeco Travelers, among many others -- has borrowed unapologetically from folk, hip-hop, rap, reggae, do-wop, and Motown, and have deliberately incited reaction from neo-traditionalists. Although this talk can only be a rudimentary outline, I provide sufficient examples (as well as a selected discography as a handout) to emphasize the crucial paradox in contemporary zydeco. Specifically, the processes of hybridity and mixing that were the very origin of this musical form in the early twentieth century are now contested by some (though, only a few) as a betrayal of the "authentic" musical tradition -- which has its origins, in fact, in such forms of mixing and hybridity. The cultural capital accrues, therefore, only in relation to the fan culture that accepts or rejects the new additions to the standard zydeco repertoire. The alternate view to the emphasis on respecting tradition and a sort of authenticity is that zydeco draws its strength precisely from the younger musicians' ability to adapt to new influences while retaining the fundamental energy and passion that defines Afro-Caribbean music of southern Louisiana.