Zydeco is the music and dance of Louisiana’s Black Creole communities: accordion and rubboard (frottoir) over a blues and R&B groove. Couples dance close with a syncopated, bouncing step at trail rides, church dances and festivals.
The name comes from the Creole French song ‘Les haricots sont pas salés’ — ‘zarico’ sounds like ‘zydeco’. In the 1950s–60s Clifton Chenier, the ‘King of Zydeco’, mixed Creole ‘la-la’ house-dance music with blues and R&B, and Boozoo Chavis kept the old rural sound alive. Zydeco is not the same as Cajun music, though the two share the accordion and the prairies of southwest Louisiana. Zydeco grew in Black Creole communities and travelled with them to Houston and California; the dance is a tight, rhythmic two-step with a pause or ‘skip’ and lots of footwork variations.
