Word: zydeco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cajun musicians are a colorful, immensely talented lot whose fame is just beginning to reach beyond the bayous and prairies of backcountry Louisiana. Among them are the scholarly accordionist Mark Savoy; guitar virtuoso Sonny Landreth; Michael Doucet, the leader of the fiery Cajun band Beausoleil; and Zydeco players like Keith Frank, Geno Delafose and Terrance Simien, whose dynamic marriage of white Cajun and black Delta blues offers a thrilling alternative to rap and processed...
Major record labels are starting to take notice. Musicians like Landreth, Wayne Toups and Stanley "Buckwheat" Dural have been marketed beyond the "roots music" category, and Cajun-Zydeco festivals and clubs have sprung up on both coasts. The Cajun-Zydeco sound has influenced mainstream artists as well. Paul Simon's homage to Zydeco and its late "king,'' Clifton Chenier, That Was Your Mother, was one of the highlights of his multimillion-selling Graceland album. Country chanteuse Mary Chapin Carpenter won a Grammy in 1992 for Down at the Twist and Shout, her foot-stompin' tribute to Cajun music in general...
...Cajun is the raucous, slightly tragic musical memory of a people, then Zydeco is its ebullient younger cousin. The name is the phonetic rendering of the first two words of the French phrase "les haricots sont pas salas," which means "the snap beans aren't salted," a traditional indicator of hard times. But there is no misery here: while Cajun's intrinsic melancholy can be heard in its grave waltzes, Zydeco is almost nothing but upbeat two-step rhythms. Audiences show their appreciation not by applauding but by getting up and dancing...
...most popular Zydeco artist currently is Frank, whose rap- inflected music is rocking Zydeco clubs like Richard's and Slim's Y-Ki-Ki in Opelousas. But a number of even more talented young musicians are fast emerging. Delafose (pronounced De-la-foss), 23, whose late father John was a highly regarded Zydeco performer, is a superb accordionist who sings in both English and French. A quiet man who habitually sports a big, black cowboy hat, Delafose taught himself to play the accordion at age 13. On his first solo album, French Rockin' Boogie, he shows his ability to take...
Simien, 29, a red-hot accordionist whose vocal style recalls that of Aaron Neville, first discovered Zydeco at a fund raiser for his local Catholic church. "Black people in those days, they worked, they went to church, and they went to Zydeco," notes Simien, whose father was a bricklayer. "That was their life." On albums like Zydeco on the Bayou and There's Room for Us All, his high, near falsetto voice floats lovingly over a driving, rock-hard accompaniment...