About M. Ryan DeJean

Born in Opelousas and raised in Lafayette, aside from a three-year stint in Ville Platte, I began attending and recording shows in the local DIY music scene at the tenderly awkward age of 14. After high school, I spent several years living in Denver and then Europe before earning my B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Louisiana, focusing on culture, linguistics, and folklore. Most wonderfully, my son arrived in the middle of pursuing my degree.

While at UL and embracing fatherhood, I was also a member of several popular and distinctive bands. In the years that followed, I founded Sickbay to nurture Lafayette’s “non-traditional” creative community while building bridges between it, local “traditional” arts, and the region at large. Through Sickbay, I curated over 350 events in less than five years and co-produced a series of over 25 studio and live recordings for a wide range of artists from South Louisiana. All the while, I had a seven-year run producing The Diamond Sea, a weekly radio show on Lafayette’s NPR affiliate, KRVS.

After more than a decade of working in creative and strategic communications, including roles as a civil servant at Lafayette Consolidated Government, I launched Worrytime Studios. At the same time, I returned to UL and completed an M.A. in English with a concentration in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and work in sociolinguistics. My research examines how language practices and embodied interaction shape identity, belonging, and cultural continuity in regional cultural contexts, focusing on language ideologies and contemporary Cajunness. In parallel, I examine linguicism, linguistic equity, and complexity in multilingual pedagogy. You can learn more about my academic work at mryandejean.com.

I am an educator, musician, recording engineer, photographer, curator, and communications professional. I put my heart into everything I do and look for the heart in everything, too. Above all, I love my family and my friends, and I’m a cheerleader for everything and everyone I care for.