The accordion-based dance music of Gulf Coast Creoles, the French-speaking Blacks of
southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas. Often described by non-Creoles as a
combination of Black urban blues and Cajun accordion music, zydeco actually represents
a more complex hybrid whose roots predate, and whose development instead parallels,
these cognate African American and Louisiana French musical styles. Conversely, while
“zydeco” is now sometimes applied, especially by outsiders, to any or all varieties of
Creole music, both past and present, Creoles themselves usually restrict the term to the
bluesy, highly amplified dance music that developed in cities just after World War II.
Much like urban blues and contemporary Cajun music, then, zydeco is actually a
relatively youthful popular style whose ultimate origins nonetheless reach to the folk
traditions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the formative era in Gulf Coast Creole
culture.
It was during the Caribbean slave rebellions of the late 1700s that large numbers of
gens libres de coulour, the forebears of the contemporary Creoles, arrived in southwest
Louisiana from Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti), settling the bayous, prairies, and
marshlands west of New Orleans. Originally subsisting as small farmers or ranchers,
trappers and fishermen, even as slave-owning planters, these “free persons of color”
intermingled in subsequent generations with other French- or English-speaking African
Americans; with the descendants of the colonial French and Spanish of pre-1803
Louisiana; with later European émigrés (notably Germans, Italians, and Irish); with the
Américains who arrived from the Deep or Upper South after the Louisiana Purchase;
even with the remnants of the region’s Native American populations. However, the
Creoles’ most important neighbors from that early period to the present have been the
Acadians, or Cajuns, whom the French colonists exiled to southwest Louisiana from
Nova Scotia (Acadia) during the French and Indian War.
Given that cultural context, Creole music predictably reflects an extraordinary range
of influences; however, three particular musical strains assumed special importance in the
early development of zydeco: the instrumental traditions, originally dominated by the
violin and later the accordion, shared by the Creoles and Cajuns; the dance songs known
locally as “juré singing,” a regional variant of the African and African American “ring
shout”; and the rhythmic traditions of the Creoles Caribbean homeland. When, in the
1940s and 1950s, the social music derived from these various subcurrents further assimilated the instrumentation and idioms of Black urban blues—the fourth major
influence in modern zydeco—the style, as it’s now known, came into being.
The drumming of Creole slaves in south Louisiana was routinely remarked by 18thand 19th-century observers; besides providing zydecos rhythmic foundations, these
percussive traditions also contributed one of the genre’s most distinctive elements, the
frottoir (rub board), a vest of corrugated metal that is rhythmically scraped and tapped
with keys or spoons. Notwithstanding its unique forrn, the frottoir is actually only a
regional variant of the ubiquitous African and African American “scraper.” Thus, among
the most frequently noted instruments of 19th-century Creoles was the jawbone, the
mandible of a large draft animal, played by scraping the teeth with a bone, key, or stick
(notched gourds or sticks were put to similar use). This rhythmic principle was later
transferred to washboards of the household variety and, after the 20th-century
industrialization of the Gulf Coast provided the materials and means, to the rub board
metallic vests.
These 19th-century polyrhythmic traditions were clearly compatible, and often
coincided with the subspecies of the African American “ring shout” known as juré
singing, a circular dance accompanied by the antiphonal (call-and-response) singing and
the shuffling, stamping, clapping, or patting of the dancers. As among ring shouts
generally, these highly expressive, often extemporaneous, songs might be either secular
or sacred—the Cteole juré translates as “testify,” a term with both personal and religious
connotations in Black culture—thereby anticipating in form and content many 20thcentury popular styles (such as the blues or gospel, besides, of course, zydeco itself).
Significantly, Creole folk etymology traces the term “zydeco” to a lyric commonplace
first documented among juré singers in the 1930s, “les haricots sontpas sales” (the snap
beans aren’t salted), a metaphor for hard times. (The basic idea is that the singer hasn’t
even a scrap of salt meat to season this meager diet, a trope symbolically linked to
various other hardships, including romantic difficulties.) The orthography of “zydeco” or
its many variants—“zodico,” “zotico,” “zordico,” “zadeco,” “zarico,” and so forth—is
thus said to be a phonetic representation of ‘s’haricots (the elision of the final syllable of
the plural article les with the noun haricots). Recent research suggests, however, that this
idiom may also reflect a coincidental phonological similarity between the French word
for beans and various West African terms for music and dance. Indeed, in late-20thcentury Creole usage, “zydeco” functions much like the English word “dance,” referring,
as a noun, to a social occasion involving music, dance, and drink, to the music played at
such a function, to a particular dance step or to the tune that accompanies it—specifically,
in the last two cases, to a fast, syncopated two-step; in other instances, “zydeco” acts as a
verb, signifying participation in these activities.
The term’s possible origins aside, however, all available evidence suggests that the
late-20th-century usage of “zydeco” postdates World War II, before which the dance
music played on fiddles and, later, accordions at Creole house parties, picnics, or the like
was most commonly called “La La,” “French La La,” or simply “French music,” a
tradition that, in conjunction with Afro-Caribbean rhythms and juré singing, constitutes a
third seminal influence in zydeco. Derived in part from the Celtic fiddle tunes brought to
Louisiana by the Acadians, this repertoire was both modified and enlarged in Creole
tradition, especially after the arrival in the mid-19th century of the diatonic button accordion, an instrument gradually supplanting the fiddle among Cajuns, but especially
Creoles.
At least from the date of the earliest aural evidence (the sound recordings made in the
1920s), there has been such a considerable overlap between Cajun and Creole
instrumental styles that, for practical purposes, these have often constituted a single
tradition. This was especially so before World War II. For example, the playing of
Amadé Ardoin, the legendary Creole accordionist who recorded extensively in the 1920s
and 1930s, often with Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee, is virtually indistinguishable from
that of his Cajun counterparts. As time passed, however, Creole tradition increasingly
reflected its African American provenance—for instance, through a greater emphasis on
rhythmic complexity at the expense of melodic development. These qualities were
accentuated during or just after the war, as large numbers of Creoles migrated to
Louisiana cities like Lafayette and Lake Charles, or, in Texas, to Beaumont, Port Arthur,
and especially Houston. Granting Black French music’s longstanding affinity to the
blues-partly a result of direct influence, partly a reflection of a common African and
African American origin—it was during this period that Creole musicians fully
assimilated the urban rhythm-and-blues (R&B) style, an adaptation signaling the
emergence of zydeco proper.
During its early urban phase, Creole dance music maintained the basic instrumentation
of accordion and rub board, occasionally (though with decreasing frequency)
supplemented by fiddle. For a time, too, the most typical performance settings were
house parties or similar gatherings likewise recalling the rural tradition. Soon, however,
Creole musicians were performing in cafes, taverns, and dance halls, adding the
amplification and amplified instruments—electric guitar and bass, drums, even keyboards
and horns—characteristic of the postwar blues band, in the process absorbing much of
that genre’s style and repertoire. Around the same time, many accordionists discarded the
diatonic button accordion for the chromatic piano instrument better suited to the blues or
popular items now added to the traditional repertoire of two-steps and waltzes, while
lyrics in English were now interspersed with Creole French folksongs. Two concurrent
developments conclusively mark the maturation of zydeco: the increased interaction
between Creole music and electronic media, and the appearance of professional or
semiprofessional “stars.”
Tellingly, the term “zydeco” itself first appears in its present sense on commercial
recordings from the late 1940s and early 1950s, including among them the first records of
the performer who more than any other shaped the genre, Clifton Chenier. Born at
Opelousas, Louisiana, in 1925, Chenier learned to play the accordion from family and
neighbors. In the late 1940s, he moved first to Port Arthur then eventually Houston,
working as a truck driver by day, playing accordion at night with his brother Cleveland
on rub board. By the early 1950s, however, Chenier was touring and recording with an
expanded ensemble, scoring occasional regional or even national “hits” in the R&B vein.
By the end of the decade, his recording career had come to a standstill, though he
remained in demand as a regional performer, and in the early 1960s, he struck up a
relationship with California record producer Chris Strachwitz. The recordings Chenier
made over the next two decades for Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label would largely define
modern zydeco, not only solidifying Chenier’s reputation within the Creole community
but also earning him international acclaim. Besides drawing on French tradition and blues, Chenier continually expanded zydeco’s boundaries by incorporating elements of
other ethnic and popular styles—rock, soul, country-and-western, jazz, and swing. By the
time of his death in 1987, he had appeared with his Red Hot Louisiana Band throughout
Europe and the United States, serving as the subject of television and film documentaries,
articles, and books, even winning a Grammy Award as well as a Heritage Fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Following Chenier’s example, Creole musicians have continued to test the limits of
zydeco, encouraged by the growth of ethnic pride within the Creole community, by the
growing interest of outsiders in Creole culture and music, and by the ever-increasing role
of media formats such as tapes, CDs, and videos. Like many contemporary ethnic styles,
zydeco in the 1990s leads something of a dual existence: valued within the Creole
community as a symbol of cultural identity, simultaneously consumed by outside
enthusiasts as a musical commodity. Zydeco reaches a global audience through the
performances of Creole artists and through the work of popular musicians who have
recently begun to experiment with this distinctive Black sound. Even within the Creole
community, the trend is toward larger, more commercialized, and self-conscious venues
like festivals and trail rides; among the most important of these are the enormously
popular dances regularly held by most Catholic parishes with large Creole memberships.
Moreover, while many African American styles such as the blues have suffered because
of the changing musical tastes of young Black performers and audiences, zydeco, in the
1990s at least, continues to attract young Creoles, albeit with concomitant modifications,
as witnessed by the influences from funk, disco, and rap. One of the most vital and viable
of all African American musical traditions, zydeco appears destined to remain so for
some time to come.
John Minton
References
Ancelet, Barryjean. 1988. Zydeco/Zarico: Beans, Blues, and Beyond. Black Mwic Research
Journal 8:33–49.
Ancelet, Barry Jean, and Elemore Morgan Jr. 1984. The Makers of Cajun Music: Musiciens cadiens
et créoles. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Broven, John. [1983] 1987. South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous. Gretna: Pelican.
Savoy, Ann Allen, ed. 1984. Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People. Vol. 1. Eunice: Bluebird Press.
Spitzer, Nick. 1979. Booklet for Zodico: Louisiana Créole Music. Rounder LP 6009.
Strachwitz, Chris. 1989. Booklet for Zydeco. Volume One: TheEarly Years, 1961–1962. Arhoolie
CD 307. Compact Disc.
——. [1987] 1992 . Booklet for Clifton Chenier, Clifton Sings the Blues. Arhoolie CD 351.
Compact Disc.