CHAPTER 21 | CAJUN AND ZYDECO MUSIC 521
(Scottish colonists were an important part of the population of Acadia.) In the
nineteenth century Cajuns adopted the ten-button diatonic accordion as a lead
melody instrument alongside the fi ddle, and new dances like the waltz and two-
step supplemented reels and jigs. Guitar was added for chordal backup and tri-
angle and spoons for percussion.
Although 78-rpm records of Cajun music date back to the 1920s, the music
was little known outside Louisiana until the Balfa Brothers, led by fi ddler Dewey
Balfa, played the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960s. The group Beausoleil,
formed by fi ddler Michael Doucet in 1975 and still active today, brought Cajun
music, sung in both French and English, to a much wider audience in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, rural French-speaking black Louisianans, or Creoles, adapted
Cajun music to their own culture by bringing in African and Caribbean infl u-
ences, a process that probably began well before 1900. The result is zydeco, a
name probably derived from the Creole dialect’s pronunciation of “les haricots”;
“Les haricots sont pas salés” (The green beans aren’t salty) is the title of a song
about hard times, when one can’t afford salt pork to fl avor vegetables. In place of
the ten-button diatonic accordion, zydeco musicians prefer either a larger ver-
sion with thirty-one buttons, resembling the instrument used in conjunto, or the
piano accordion. Either one gives the player access to blue notes not obtain-
able on the smaller Cajun instrument. Instead of triangle and spoons, zydeco
percussion features a washboard, whose player rubs a spoon or bottle opener
against the corrugated metal, or a frottoir, a washboard-like instrument that
the player wears like a vest. Since the mid-twentieth century, zydeco bands
show the infl uence of rhythm and blues in their use of electric guitar, electric
bass, and drum set.
Zydeco combines Cajun-style dance music with Afro-Caribbean syncopation
and blues-derived intonation and blue notes. Its history on records begins in the
1950s with Clifton Chenier, the fi rst great zydeco master, a singer and performer
on the piano accordion, to which he brought an intense R&B energy. Boozoo
Chavis was another early recording artist. But zydeco did not reach a wide audi-
ence until the 1980s, when Buckwheat Zydeco and Rockin’ Dopsie became well
known both with their own bands and through collaboration with rock stars Eric
Clapton and Paul Simon. In 1982 the fi rst Grammy awarded to a zydeco musician
went to Queen Ida (Ida Lewis Guillory), born in Louisiana in 1929 but raised in
San Francisco’s small black Creole community. Her performance of “Ful il sa”
(LG 21.3), a song by her brother, Al Rapone, demonstrates the foot-stompingzydecoLG 21.3CD 4.9 Listening Guide 21.2 “Soy de San Luis” FLACO JIMÉNEZListen & Refl ect
- How might this song be heard differently by Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers?
If you have access to the bilingual version recorded in the 1990s by the Texas Tornados,
listen for the similarities and differences. How do they change the song’s impact?
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