Zydeco : A kind of black american dance music originally from Southern Louisiana

[Biscayne]

Modern Zydeco as we know it was born in Houston born from migrants from Southern Louisiana in the Frenchtown section of 5th Ward Houston who modernized the traditional La-La music of southern Louisiana after they came into contact with the urban R&B and "downhome" style TX blues in Houston, hence it's association with cowboy culture and trailrides.

Zydeco's Birthplace

Creole Community and "Mass" Communication: Houston Zydeco as a Mediated Tradition on JSTOR

Boom!! And there you have it.

That’s where the trail ride aspect came from.

 

[ThatTruth777]

It's not black American music or originally from South louisiana. It came from France and creole people (french and African or native American heritage) put their own twist to it.

Good lookin out on the thread tho. People don't know about zydeco music. Most think its a form of bluegrass.

 

[QU Hectic]

Those moves though

 

[Chelsea Bridge]

What’s the difference between that and hand dancing?

 

[ReturnOfJudah]

From Houston to Lafayette. It goes down

 

[IllmaticDelta]

It's not black American music or originally from South louisiana. It came from France and creole people (french and African or native American heritage) put their own twist to it.

Good lookin out on the thread tho. People don't know about zydeco music. Most think its a form of bluegrass.

Zydeco is definitely ADOS music. MY boy @Supper who is black american/creole from Texas can explain further but simply put:



https://www.thecoli.com/threads/alw...-was-new-orleans.676669/page-17#post-32580551

Zydeco was a genre born off the back of the Blues. There was no Zydeco sounding music in France

 

[Sex Luthor]

Zydeco is authentic Black American music. It all came together in post-French colonial Louisiana. Louisiana had already long been a slave state, and been through reconstruction and Jim Crow when the musical and cultural gumbo of Zydeco was formed. Any music before that, was just various elements of proto-zydeco music that hadn’t come together yet to create Zydeco. But Zydeco is Authentic Creole music with some of its largest ingredients coming from African descended slaves and mixed race creoles with African heritage.

Zydeco originally evolved from Cajun, an Old World-rooted style of music brought over from Europe more than 200 years ago. Cajun is composed of syncopated, a cappella religious songs, a mix of English but mostly French lyrics, and was inspired by a wide rage of Southern musical influences.
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/louisiana/articles/a-brief-history-of-zydeco-music/

 

[Sex Luthor]

Zydeco is definitely ADOS music. MY boy @Supper who is black american/creole from Texas can explain further but simply put:



https://www.thecoli.com/threads/alw...-was-new-orleans.676669/page-17#post-32580551

Zydeco was a genre born off the back of the Blues. There was no Zydeco sounding music in France

You realize creole people are part French right? The word Zydeco is a french word

Amédé Ardoin

It was also often just called French music or le musique Creole known as "la-la." Amédé Ardoin, the second musician to record the Creole music of southwest Louisiana and its most influential, made his first recordings in 1929. This Creole music served as a foundation for what later became known as zydeco.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

You realize creole people are part French right?

and? the people who birthed the Blues are part Irish; yet, you wont find anything in Ireland that sounds like BLues



Amede who influenced both the old Cajun style and the modern Zydeco sound was blending blues/waltzes/two-steps back then, laid the foundation for that type of music.

f southern Louisiana’s first great recording artists was a Creole accordionist and singer named Amédé Ardoin. At the time his records appeared, between 1930 and 1934, the terms “Cajun music,” “Creole music,” and “zydeco” were not in use, and zydeco as it is heard today had yet to evolve. Accordingly, there is some debate as to how Ardoin’s music should be classified. What is clear, however, is that Ardoin’s inspired musicianship, as expressed in a seamless, soulful blend of two-steps, blues, and waltzes, played a crucial role in forging both styles.

Ardoin is thought to have grown up in the countryside between Eunice and Basile, Louisiana, where many of his descendants still live. Ardoin’s family regarded him with mixed feelings because he refused to do farm work or other manual labor, instead relying on his musical performances for income. There are many tales of Ardoin hitchhiking around the unpaved roads of the prairie parishes with his accordion in a burlap sack, playing wherever he could. Many of his performances were at house parties rather than public venues.

By the 1930s, the accordion had been popular in Louisiana for some sixty or seventy years. In southern Louisiana, it adapted well to a combination of European song forms and African rhythmic approaches such as swing and syncopation. Ardoin personified this cultural blend and enhanced its development through his deft technique and his ability to improvise. Ardoin was a lively, inventive accordionist who could keep a crowd dancing while playing alone. He was also a soulful singer whose emotional style made dramatic use of elongated, high-pitched notes. Some of his lyrics, such as “Les Blues de la Prison,” were based on medieval French songs, or snippets of them. Other numbers, such as “La Valse de Chantiers Petroliperes” (“The Waltz of the Oilfield Workers”) reflected the socioeconomic changes afoot in southern Louisiana as a predominately agrarian culture began to experience industrialization.

Ardoin’s music was widely disseminated in southern Louisiana through a series of commercial recordings released by the Columbia label between 1930 and 1934. Some of these records found Ardoin accompanied by the great Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee. Such an interracial collaboration was unusual during an era when the two would almost surely have been barred from performing together in public. Ironically, a racial incident ended Ardoin’s career, around 1939, when he was severely beaten after a white woman wiped his face with her handkerchief. Mentally incapacitated from the attack, Ardoin spent the rest of his life in a state mental hospital.

while Clifton Chennier invented modern Zydeco

Ardoin’s music deeply influenced two important (and, in turn, influential) midcentury musicians: the Cajun accordionist Iry LeJeune and the Creole accordionist Clifton Chenier. Chenier forged the zydeco sound that is still heard today by blending Cajun and Creole folk aesthetics into his interpretations of mainstream African-American blues and R&B, which he sang in French. LeJeune’s high-pitched emotional singing and passionate accordion playing continue to resonate in contemporary Cajun music

Amede Ardoin

 

[Supper]

and? the people who birthed the Blues are part Irish; yet, you wont find anything in Ireland that sounds like BLues



Amede who influenced both the old Cajun style and the modern Zydeco sound was blending blues/waltzes/two-steps back then, laid the foundation for that type of music.



while Clifton Chennier invented modern Zydeco

Amede Ardoin

Basically the two steps and the instrumental arrangements are what set Zydeco apart from the R&B and the blues.

Other than that it uses typical blues scales, progressions, textures and vocal inflections.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Basically the two steps and the instrumental arrangements are what set Zydeco apart from the R&B and the blues.

Other than that it uses typical blues scales, progressions, textures and vocal inflections.

yep.....people forget there were blues waltz played in the Delta

 

[Supper]

You realize creole people are part French right? The word Zydeco is a french word

Zydeco = Creole folk music + TX style downhome blues + Houston urban R&B

Cajun and Creole folk music evolved along side each other and influenced each other to some extent hence the two steps or watlz found in creole folk and 12 bar, swung notes, and syncopation found in Cajun music. But, zydeco draws from creole folk as an influence not cajun.

 

[Sex Luthor]

and? the people who birthed the Blues are part Irish; yet, you wont find anything in Ireland that sounds like BLues



Amede who influenced both the old Cajun style and the modern Zydeco sound was blending blues/waltzes/two-steps back then, laid the foundation for that type of music.



while Clifton Chennier invented modern Zydeco

Amede Ardoin

I'm just telling you where it came from breh. Part of my family is creole. I did a history project on it. Its been in Louisiana since French settlers came here.

"The French-language music and songs of the central Mississippi basin were influenced by the music of settlers from other countries who followed the French, particularly the Irish and English settlers. Other "home grown" adaptations are apparent in the use of various stringed instruments. Some, like the violin and bass fiddle, were commonly used by the French, Irish, and English, while the Italian mandolin and the African American banjo were instruments that became widely available and began to be used by many ethnic groups other than those that originated them, including the French. The songs of the region include traditional dance songs performed at house parties, as well as ballads that tell stories of the French settlers in the region."
French American Song

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I'm just telling you where it came from breh. Part of my family is creole. I did a history project on it. Its been in Louisiana since French settlers came here.

zydeco is a modern genre of music based in the Blues

 

[Biscayne]

and? the people who birthed the Blues are part Irish; yet, you wont find anything in Ireland that sounds like BLues



Amede who influenced both the old Cajun style and the modern Zydeco sound was blending blues/waltzes/two-steps back then, laid the foundation for that type of music.



while Clifton Chennier invented modern Zydeco

Amede Ardoin

Zydeco = Creole folk music + TX style downhome blues + Houston urban R&B

Cajun and Creole folk music evolved along side each other and influenced each other to some extent hence the two steps or watlz found in creole folk and 12 bar, swung notes, and syncopation found in Cajun music. But, zydeco draws from creole folk as an influence not cajun.

Basically a hodgepodge of Black musical influences from the Delta to Texas and town in between with a little bit of French/Southern European music.