Customer Reviews

Texas Zydeco

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For perfectly good reasons, we tend to associate Cajun and Zydeco music with Louisiana, but for much of the 20th century, Cajun and Creole people moved West into Texas, usually for straightforward economic advantage - the towns and cities of Texas offered more employment and better living conditions - and they took their music with them. You are at least as likely to find people playing Zydeco in Texas as in Louisiana. In the introduction to this stunningly handsome book, the author makes the point that it was in Houston, not in New Orleans or any other Louisiana city, that `the folk music of black Creoles from southwest Louisiana first (underwent) a major synthesis with urban influences to create, document and codify that sound'. He goes on to make the claim (and as the book progresses, to substantiate it) that `several key innovations in the evolution of this music - concerning not only its name, but also its instruments, recording history, leading figures, and stylistic twists and turns - occurred initially in Texas'. He uses the phrase `Louisiana Lapland' to describe where `a large part of south Louisiana seems to have "lapped over" into Texas, and quotes John Minton to the effect that the music `first made its mark' in Texas, before becoming popular back in Louisiana. Later, he asserts that `Zydeco is a doubly syncretized musical phenomenon, a hybrid that required transplantation and cross-pollination to come into existence' - saying in effect that Zydeco, as we know it could only really have happened in Texas.
The book is a celebration of this music and its associated culture, marrying Roger Wood's text and James Fraher's photography. It is a marvellously successful combination. The photographs, of which there are a great many - on average, every other page seems to be given over to one - are beautifully reproduced in a monochrome of outstanding depth and clarity. Fraher is evidently as much an artist as he is a Zydeco fan, and he has captured the people, the instruments, the atmosphere and the context of the music with great skill, sensitivity and style. Almost any photograph could be singled out for special mention, but for just a few examples - Leroy Thomas with his stars and stripes accordion, Raymond Chavis almost in silhouette, the proud determination on the face of Sherman Robertson, Zydeco dancers at the Silver Slipper, Dora Jenkins in seductive pose and Vanessa David in action at a festival. There's an especially poignant portrait of L.C. Donatto Jnr, holding a photograph of his father and a rubboard that has been played so hard it has a gaping hole in the middle. This is black music, but Fraher's scope extends also to the white people who are and have been players in the scene, as club owners, collectors (including a fine shot of Mack McCormick), fans, dancers and even occasionally as executants.
The illustrations are so striking, and you could spend so long admiring them, that you might almost forget to read the text, but that would be a bad move. Wood's account of the music has to be the most definitive yet published. He is well informed and lucid on the subject of the music's history - the chapter `Chank-A-Chank and Social Change' tells the story of how the music came to be, and it is a measure of the thorough job he has done that it begins by noting a French presence in Texas documented as far back as 1682. A couple of pages on, he points out that Amadie Ardoin recorded in San Antonio in 1934, and that just over a decade or later, it was at sessions in Houston that the first two recordings were made whose lyrics included the word `zydeco' (or a variant of the word - the book goes into some detail on the etymology, variation and development of the term), by Lightnin' Hopkins and Clarence Garlow respectively. The music's history is thoroughly rehearsed, supported by what looks like meticulous research and plenty of fine oral history - an appendix giving the list of interviews carried out takes up more than three pages. There is a chapter devoted to Clifton Chenier, covering the introduction of the piano-key accordion and the invention of the rubboard (the first one was made by a Cajun welder by the name of Willie Landry, based on a design drawn in the sand by Clifton himself). This must be one of the fullest accounts of Chenier's life and music yet published, and it ends by quoting Wilbert Thibodeaux - `Clifton Chenier is the only zydeco man who ever really deserved to call himself the king'. Amen to that, but we're still only a little over halfway into the book.
The remainder covers the wide range of other Zydeco men and women - not kings or queens perhaps, but plenty with claims to the aristocracy. It also tells the story of how Zydeco's popularity grew and grew in the years following the king's death - he had benefited from the wider interest in the music, nationally and internationally, but it has been the last twenty-odd years (Chenier died in 1987) that has seen the music's greatest popularity. It has also been a time when, as Moore states, it: `went through a process of radically redefining itself according to a multitude of contemporary realities and new possibilities'. These change factors are covered here, and the story is brought right up to date, not only with the work of young radicals and experimenters like Li'l Brian Terry, but also with the reach back into the music's roots represented by Les Amis Creole (a recent Arhoolie CD). The story covers not only the musicians themselves, but also the role of the venue owners, the musical instrument makers, the recording companies and so on.
This book is a beautiful object to own for its own sake, but it is also of major significance in the documentation of Zydeco, and is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more about this most extraordinary of music. (this review, by Ray Templeton, first appeared in Blues & Rhythm magazine, used by permission)

James Fraher's black and white photos highlight a solid story of the most influential players and history in Zydeco music past and present, and while the survey focuses on the genre's rise in Texas, any with an interest in Cajun or Zydeco music will find it incorporates facts and history from other states as well. Chapters chart the movement of black Creoles from Louisiana into Texas and the cross-influence of their music with other Texas forms. The seven-year collaboration between writer Wood and photographer Fraher provides powerful visual embellishment to the facts and biographies within.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I could hear the Zydeco music playing as I read this book. Roots, if you want to know how Zydeco orginated, who played or stills plays Zydeco music and where to go to listen to this music, this is the book. Being a Zydeco music fan and actually attending zydeco events that are mentioned made this a very exciting book.

We are planning to retire to Houston from the northeast. This book is full of useful information about the history of Texas zydeco, and current venues where one can go to dance. We love zydeco.