Few artists in southwest Louisiana, ground zero for zydeco, can match the resume of Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural of Carencro. Leader of the Grammy- and Emmy-winning band Buckwheat Zydeco, Dural performed before a worldwide TV audience of 3 billion during the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics. Read more
Watch a video of Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble performing at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia last December for the first Zydeco Crossroads dance party. Read more.
Happy Mardi Gras! Enjoy our playlist of zydeco flavored tunes for Fat Tuesday by Queen Ida, Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. (pictured above), Beau Jocque, and Terrance Simien.
Women are few and far between as zydeco performers. The most famous woman band leader in zydeco is Louisiana-born, California-based Queen Ida Guillory, but there’s also Rosie Ledet, Donna Angelle, and Jennifer Frank (who plays bass in brother Keith’s band) and Lake Charles native Ann Goodly. Read more.
Sunset, Louisiana is about a twenty-minute drive straight north from Lafayette and it’s the official world capital of rubboards, thanks to Tee Don Landry and his Key of Z Rubboards company. Started by Tee Don’s father, Key of Z has been making the percussive bib by hand since 1946. Read more.
Rockin’ Dopsie Jr returned to his hometown of Lafayette and shared some zydeco knowledge with us while the ZC team was exploring the Southwest Louisiana city. In this interview clip Dopsie Jr talks about his decision to move to New Orleans and the subsequent spread of zydeco to the land of brass and jazz, the zydeco artists he grew up listening to and more. Read more.
Chubby Carrier spent a few minutes with us to film this interview clip outside of El Sido’s in Lafayette, LA last October. The Bayou Swamp bandleader talks about the first time he saw his Grandfather playing the accordion, gets technical with an explanation of diatonic vs. chromatic accordions and explains what it is about zydeco music that makes people feel so good. Read more.