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

[Biscayne]

zydeco is a modern genre of music based in the Blues

Had no idea Lightning Hopkins wife was Cliftons cousin.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

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.

I wouldn't add southern european to the mix but the rest is accurate

 

[Supper]

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.

Chronologically east to west.

Had no idea Lightning Hopkins wife was Cliftons cousin.

Hopkins was the one who introduced Robert McCormick, the man responsible for coining the modern spelling of Zydeco, to Clifton in Frenchtown.

 

[Supper]

I wouldn't add southern european to the mix but the rest is accurate

Cajuns absorbed the waltz from their german ancestors and neighbors of german descent, but that's more a semantic point.

German Coast - Wikipedia

Not all Cajuns descend solely from Acadian exiles who settled in south Louisiana in the 18th century, as some have intermarried with other groups. Their members now include people Irish and Spanish ancestry, as well as a lesser extent of Germans and Italians

Cajuns - Wikipedia

 

[Freedman]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

something related

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The beginning of Zydeco.

In the late 1940s, Louisiana’s Creole musicians became inspired by the rhythm and blues and jazz played on radio and juke boxes, so they eliminated the fiddle and brought out the rubboard. From then on, the music of Creoles diverged from Cajun music. Rural Creoles combined La La with the blues and jazz of urban blacks to create the rollicking and syncopated sounds of zydeco.


Comparing contemporary Zydeco and Cajun music and dance.



The rubboard player often drives the energy of zydeco music by emphasizing strong, syncopated rhythms. Zydeco usually has no fiddle, and the music resonates with sounds from jazz, rhythm and blues, and more recently, hip hop. Cajun music, which usually has no rubboard, sounds closer to country music, often melodic and sweet. Cajun musicians tend to play two-steps and waltzes in alternation, whereas zydeco musicians play mostly two-steps, and few waltzes.

The distinctions between zydeco and Cajun music affect the dancing styles. Cajun jitterbug, with its many turns and unique broken-leg step, is smoother and more precise; but zydeco dancing is more soulful, as expressed through greater hip action. Small, crowded dance halls have kept zydeco dancers in place on the dance floor, rather than circling the room like Cajun dancers. Dancing in a tight space to the pulsing and syncopated zydeco beat promotes a bouncy, vertical style with few turns. In contrast, dancing around the room to melodic Cajun music encourages smooth, horizontal movements with more turns.

USA: LOUISIANA: Origins of Zydeco and Cajun Music

 

[Supper]

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

Take from a NEW ORLEANIAN music scholar on Zydeco's origins.



His book written in 1998.

The Kingdom of Zydeco

The truth is becoming more mainstream.

 

[KeysT]

Zydeco-1984 -Basquiat

Basquiat painted the realities of Black histories, juxtaposed with fabricated myths, to illuminate how African-American identities are constructed and absorbed into a collective history. Basquiat’s 1984 painting Zydeco is a visual inquisition into African-American identity and conceptions of Blackness. Zydeco refers to an energetic music style popular in the South which combines traditional and contemporary music aesthetics. This painting, consequently, focuses heavily on how the past effects present day awareness of Black identity. Basquiat opposes safe representations of Blackness by exposing stereotypes--using text, symbols, and myths associated with this demographic. Zydeco features a sole Black musician to represent the larger African-American community. This anonymous musician stands in the middle of three panels, surrounded by text and symbols which reference mainstream media’s commodification of ‘Blackness’ (in the right-hand panel) and the oppression of large corporations, such as Westinghouse, as a reminder of slavery. Basquiat’s Black identity, he reveals, is obscured by associative words such as ‘pick-axe’ and ‘wood’ which allude to the manual labor of a victimized past.
The two groupings of alien-like heads at the top-left and bottom-right corners of the painting help illuminate the theme of masked identity. These masks, generalized and outlined in white, exhibit Basquiat’s negotiations with white conceptualizations of blackness. This focus on the external, facial features, heads, etc., stems from an innately personal space. As art critic Robert Hughes speculated, Basquiat “could only rehearse his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for ‘head’ or ‘body’ over and over again.”[2]Basquiat also applies this simplification of elements in his use of color, layering yellow, blue, red, back, and white against a predominantly green background. These primary colors simplify the imagery and overall message of the painting to its most basic and rudimentary level. Each symbol stands distinct from the others, yet the painting achieves cohesion through the repetition of colors and shapes.

ARTS CURATED: (Un)Masked: Jean-Michel Basquiat

 

[Mindfield333]

I love seeing regional dances and hearing distinct regional sounds

we can’t lose anymore recipes!

 

[Biscayne]

something related

Did not know Leadbelly was a multi instrumentalist. What a beautiful and sad song.