EVERY GENRE PROJECT - May 7 - Zydeco
Genre of the Day - Zydeco
Album of the Day - Bayou Blues by Clifton Chenier (1971)
May 7, 2024
Today’s genre brings me straight back to around this time two years ago. It was during the dusk of my senior year of high school, and prior to my own graduation, my family was stationed in New Orleans for the last time at Tulane to see off my sister and her graduation. The air was muggy and thick, but to me it felt like a hug—I love humidity (unpopular opinion). I miss New Orleans’ nonsensical geography, its verdance, its color, its vibrant history. I hear this music and am transported back to those memories, a visceral exercise in the construction and musical seizing upon memory I talked about yesterday. While just a mere visitor here and there up until my sister left, the bayou ensnared a part of me.
Zydeco finds itself stationed as the very last genre in an alphabetical list of genres on RYM. it’s a fitting palace for me to find myself right now, as I prepare for my last full day in Los Angeles of this academic year and all the little loose ends tie themselves up. Zydeco is one of the rare American music genres that relies primarily on the sound of accordion to form its musical basis—our first hint at the partly French roots lying in this genre. Thus, we also have to examine the Cajun forces at work here.
Cajun comes from a corruption of the demonym Acadian, the word for people from the Canadian regions near Nova Scotia first colonized by France. When the British took control of the region, a handful of the French settlers fled down to the closest feasible accessible France-controlled area—Louisiana. Among these far-flung Canadian Frenchies, a new culture, French dialect, and musical styles coalesced over the last hundreds of years with major reverberations regionally throughout Louisiana.
Cajun music is just one of many influences on today’s richly-derived genre. In zydeco, Cajun rhythms meet those of Black Creole people also integral to Louisiana’s beating cultural heart, with a healthy dose of influence from blues and R&B. It singlehandedly carries the accordion industry in the United States, and also makes use of washboards called frottoirs as instrumentation, alongside horns and piano. Zydeco was around as a genre for centuries, but was solidified as a distinctive, understood musical phenomenon when it was put to record from the late 1920s onwards, elevating it from locally known music of the creoles to festival-worthy celebration around the states.
Today’s album is pure jaunt—I throw that word around for a lot of upbeat, joyous dance music on this column, but there are few genres that are as aptly deserving of the title as today’s. Little time is wasted on these zippy tracks, all accordion flair and plinky piano trading turns anchoring the King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier’s hammy, rough voice that single-handedly exposed the world to this slice of Louisiana musical culture. “Eh, Petite Fille” reveals a twinge of the petits Frenchisms that remain deeply sewn into Cajun culture. The melodies feature similarly to each other, but never lose their swampy charm as the loopy accordion draws you onto the dance floor. In my sleep-deprived mind, I dance with the alligators to this lovely collection of Louisiana glee.