Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues

10. Houston Creoles and Zydeco: The Emergence of an African American Urban Popular Style

10 Houston Creoles and Zydeco THE EMERGENCE OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN POPULAR STYLE JOHN MINTON “Play ‘Jole Blon’!” It’s Saturday afternoon at Pe-Te’s Cajun Bar-B-Que House, a tavern and dance hall in the South Houston suburb of Pasadena. Under the aegis of Cajun entrepreneur, music promoter, and disc jockey Les “Pe-Te” Johnson, L. C. Donatto and the Slippers (Fig. 10.1), one of the Bayou City’s premier zydeco bands,are holding their weekly matinee for a mixed crowd of Creoles and Cajuns. This particular request comes from a young lady among the latter. “All right!” L. C. responds, pumping his accordion. “Somebody wanted ‘Jole Blon.’” Of course,I don’t know what she talking about; I’m not a Frenchman [shouts and laughter]. I’m glad I’m not a Frenchman. And I know Pe-Te, Pe-Te ain’t no Frenchman. He talk that stuff on the radio every Tuesdays and Saturday morning,but Pe-Te is not no Frenchman.And I know I’m not no Frenchman. But now I’m going to tell you, anytime that you want to ask somebody if they’re a Frenchman, and they tell you a lie, I’m going to tell you how to find out if they’re a Frenchman.Anybody you ask,“Is you a Frenchman?”they tell you,“No,”I’m going to tell you a secret.Don’t step on all their foot.Step on that little toe, and they going to holler “Ayy-yee-yai!” Now that’s a Frenchman. And with that L. C. launches into “Jole Blon,” punctuating the traditional paean to an idealized“pretty blonde”with an unmistakable index of musical performance on the French Gulf Coast, une crie de danse, that is, a highpitched yell sounding something like “Ayy-yee-yai!”1 AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN POPULAR STYLE . 351 I begin with L. C.’s tongue-in-cheek exegesis of the telling relation between French ethnicity and musical style as an especially apt indication of that identification on the contemporary Gulf Coast, particularly in urban areas such as Houston, where other components of Creole culture (most conspicuously the French language itself) are rapidly fading. In fact, this symbolic function largely accounts for the present popularity in Houston of zydeco, customarily defined as a combination of Cajun accordion and AfricanAmerican urban blues originating among the French-speaking blacks— the “Creoles of color”—of rural South Louisiana.2 There are, however, other reasons for beginning a history of Houston zydeco with L. C.’s facetious prescription for detecting Frenchmen. That is, even in establishing the obvious tie between Creole ethnicity and ethnic tradition, L. C. simultaneously implicates the problematic qualities of both these phenomena, especially today in America’s fourth largest city, where to be black and French and a traditional musician is altogether more than a little anomalous—and thus all too easily overlooked or undervalued by a dominant culture in many ways inimical to such marginalized groups.Then again, from an insider’s perspective, the seemingly unequivocal connection Fig. 10.1 L. C. Donatto and the Slippers Zoddico Band at the Texas Folklife Festival, San Antonio,August, 1986. Left to Right: L. C. Donatto Jr., Lonzo Woods, and L. C. Donatto Sr. (Photo by Lynn Gosnell.) 352 . JOHN MINTON between Creole music and ethnic identity can just as easily obscure the idiosyncratic, even contradictory qualities that individual tradition bearers attribute to such subjective constructs, qualities indicative of endemic con- flicts and contradictions within the Creole community itself. In this last respect as in many others, L. C.’s example is typical. Consider, for instance, how such performers challenge the conventional definition of zydeco as a hybrid of Cajun accordion music and rhythm and blues played by French-speaking blacks on the rural Gulf Coast. Notwithstanding zydeco’s obvious affinities to Cajun music and blues, notwithstanding the near universal acceptance by outsiders of its status as an offshoot of these traditions, I have found virtually no consensus whatsoever among Creoles themselves concerning the precise relation between such categories as “zydeco,”“Cajun,” or “blues”—provided, that is, that the individual in question distinguishes among them at all. Anderson Moss, like L. C. a longtime exponent of Houston zydeco, seems entirely comfortable with an orthodox definition, evincing little interest in hard-and-fast typologies. When I asked, “How would you de...