From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Zydeco Dancing

Zydeco Dancing It’s nighttime and I’m in a strange town. I ask the clerk at my hotel about Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki Club. “You should’ve been here last week because Chris Ardoin played,” she said. “I’m not sure they will be open tonight if no one is playing.” She recommended a restaurant which was on the way to Slim’s. She advised that I’d have plenty of time to eat because things wouldn’t get cranking until at least 10 p.m. I questioned whether it was safe for a middleaged white guy to hang out there. She smiled broadly and said, “Oh, it’ll be okay. Now most of them will be black, but they’re not the kind of people you have to worry about.” So after dinner and full of crawfish, I arrived at the Y-Ki-Ki Club about 10 p.m. There wasn’t a car in the parking lot. Returning to the hotel, I reported the lack of zydeco to the clerk, who said, “Well, I was afraid of that, after last weekend with Chris Ardoin. You really should have been there.” I turned to head back to my room when she said, “Why don’t you go to the track?” Opelousas is the home to Evangeline Downs, a thoroughbred racetrack. I was thinking that I didn’t come all this way to watch horse racing. She explained that in the off-season, bands played at the track. I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear some second-rate band underneath a racetrack grandstand . “Let me see who’s playing,” she said as she turned away, picked up a phone, and made a call. Turning back around to me, she announced, “You’re in luck; T. Broussard is playing at Mojo’s.” 280 Determined to find live zydeco music, I headed to the track. Evangeline Downs has a racino and is open during the off-season. To attract gamblers, they offer live music on the weekends. I walked in hoping Mojo’s wouldn’t be crowded, and it wasn’t. T. Broussard and the Zydeco Steppers were in the corner of a large room with lots of big TVs hanging from the ceiling, broadcasting horse racing from Delta Downs, a small track in western Louisiana. T. and his band were playing to a sparse crowd. Most of the crowd watched; only a few dozen people danced. Within the hour, I was one of only a small handful of observers. Everyone else was dancing or taking a rest before returning to the floor, having lots of fun. I was learning what the phrase “passing a good time” means. Broussard and the Zydeco Steppers is a typical zydeco band. T. is the lead singer and accordion player. The Steppers back up T. with drums, bass guitar, keyboard, and a scrub or rub board, also known as the frottoir. The frottoir is worn like a vest and scratched with spoons or bottle tops. Each song begins with the accordion intro.; the frottoir then follows. The beginning of each song becomes repetitive if you are listening to recorded zydeco music. Live zydeco is completely different. T. gave a quick verbal introduction as he started the accordion intro. The crowd responded to his words, and the accordion intro. got them moving. Zydeco isn’t Cajun music; it’s Creole music. Creole originally referred to those born in the colonies—natives to the territory, as opposed to new immigrants—and wasn’t a reference to an individual’s ethnicity. Later the meaning changed to describe mixed race individuals. The racial composition of the Creoles in the Cajun Prairie is more mixed than in other places in the South. Blood of African-American slaves, Native Americans, and Haitians are mixed with that of Cajuns and Europeans to create the Louisiana Creoles. These blood lines affect the music. Creole music is a melting pot of African slave songs, blues, and Cajun influences. Zydeco is a relatively recent genre of Creole music. It first arose in the early twentieth century from what was known as “LaLa music,” music played at rural house parties. It was a vernacular music played with only an accordion and a washboard. Later rhythm & blues and jazz influences were incorporated in the LaLa music to form modern zydeco. 281 The term zydeco comes from the French phrase les haricots (pronounced...