Absolutely The Best of Cajun and Zydeco Vol 2. 

            "New Orleans got their thing,Ó Terrance Simien tells me one night from his home in Louisiana, deep in the bayou,  Òand we've got ours.  It's totally different stuff.  Not to say it's so different that you can't get off from doing it, but it's a different world.Ó

            A different world, but only 120 miles away as the pelican flies.  New OrleansÕ isolation made the city an incubator of indigenous sounds, spawning ground of funk and jazz. The bayou is even more remote. For centuries, people could only get around it by boat. Their whole culture reflects and revels in this seclusion.  It grew an almost inbred alteration on the culture of Acadian French Canada over 300 years ago. Their language evolved into a hybrid of French.  The music grew out of the gavottes they brought with them out of Acadia, played on button accordions and washboards. It stayed that way until the middle of the 20th Century, influencing everyone who settled among them, like the escaped and freed slaves who made up the areaÕs Creole population.  This album celebrates that music, and how it evolved during the latter half of the 20th century.

            In the 1900s, the world started to change for the Acadians. Bridges and highways made inroads into the bayou. Two world wars took many young Creoles and Acadians out of the bayous and into the wider world. Oil and gas companies started to drill locally, employing both the Acadian and Anglo populations. Radio, then television, came to the bayou, bringing all sorts of outside influences. The Louisiana government started to pressure the French speaking Acadians to get in synch with the rest of the country, starting in 1916 by making it mandatory to teach school in English. The local non-Cajun or Creole population had always looked at their francophone neighbors with disdain, and it had begun to wear on the Cajun people to the point where many were abandoning the culture. As some Acadians started to assimilate, others reacted against giving up their culture, many using the lingua franca of the world, music.

            By the early 1950s, artists like Vin Bruce and Aldus Rogers were recording Cajun music for labels like Columbia.  Jimmy C. Newman (the C stands for Cajun) became a top country artist and member of the Grand olÕ Opry who went from slipping in a little of his peopleÕs music here and there to alternating between working at the Opry and recording straight ahead Cajun albums.  Here, Newman sings ÒJolie Blon,Ó wryly called the Cajun national anthem.  Bruce does a take on it, too, with ÒHey Jolie.Ó  Rogers cuts to the musicÕs roots with the ÒLafayette Two-Step.Ó

            The two-step is the dance of both Cajun and itÕs bluesier Creole cousin Zydeco. In the 60s and 70s, the people playing this music became more vocal about their Acadian roots, some by retreating to the bunker to preserve those roots (literally in the case of Marc and Anne Savoy). Others celebrated the music by bringing it out into the wider world and fusing it with more popular genres. Cleveland Crochet and The Hillbilly Ramblers became the first Cajun band to reach the Billboard Hot 100 with the song ÒSugar Bee,Ó presented here. Cookie and the Cupcakes became a purveyor of ÒSwamp PopÓ in the late 50s, sending the tune ÒMathildaÓ into the top 50. 

            Like Newman, Zachary Richards started out playing country, albeit country rock. He quickly fused that with his Cajun roots and his blues and Zydeco leanings, offering musical and lyrical pieces of Cajun pride and activism, both subtly, as he does here with ÒLe Nouveau Two-Step,Ó and more overtly with songs like ÒReveille.Ó

            Much of the music on this album speaks to these fusions, which helped bring Cajun and Zydeco to a much wider audience. The earliest essence of this fusion is Zydeco itself, a mixture of the field hollers and blues the Creoles brought into the bayou with the Acadian two-step.  Even this has taken many shapes over the last 50 years.  Wilson Anthony ÒBoozooÓ ChavisÕ had one of the first Zydeco hits with ÒPaper In My Shoes,Ó but as his version of the bluegrass standard ÒUncle BudÓ demonstrates, his country leanings are as strong as RichardsÕ or NewmanÕs.

            Pop, rock, funk and even jazz and reggae have influenced many Zydeco and Cajun players.  Stanley ÒBuckwheat ZydecoÓ DuralÕs version of Mungo JerryÕs 1970 hit ÒIn The Summertime,Ó is a good example.

            ÒI grew up listening to a lot of different things and was influenced by a lot of different styles,Ó says Simien, whoÕs ÒA Ma MaisonÓ illustrates the point. ÒZydeco was my first love, but I took a lot of things from a lot of different styles of music and tried to put it together.  I listen to reggae and stuff like that.  I'm still discovering different things every day.Ó

            The leader in bringing Zydeco out to the world in terms the world would understand was the late, great Clifton Chenier.  Starting in the 50s, he was working with Little Richard producer Bumps Blackwell, mixing up the Creole Zydeco with a heavy dose of rock, blues and Louis Jordan style jump, as he does here on one of his signature tunes, ÒBe My Chauffeur.Ó  He became the first Zydeco musician to win a Grammy, taking home the statuette for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1983.

            While Cajun and Zydeco still wouldnÕt qualify as ÒpopÓ music, they definitely have become part of the worldÕs cultural gestalt. They have been featured in advertisements for everything from antacids to automobiles. ÒWe did a Chevrolet commercial a couple of years ago.Ó Simien concurs.

            It has also influenced some of the more open-eared musicians from outside of the bayou.  Paul Simon, for example, recorded with Simien.  ÒI ended up doing a cover of Clifton Chenier's ÔYou Used To Call Me,Õ and he ended up singing background vocals on it.  We put that record out as a single.  It never made it to an album.  We never actually made the Graceland album, but he was down.Ó

            The Zydeco group that did wind up working with Simon on Graceland was RockinÕ Dopsie and the Twisters.  Here he does a Zydeco version of Jimmy ReedÕs ÒRun Here To Me Baby,Ó also a staple of ChenierÕs repertoire.

            This album only hints at how robust this art form, on the verge of disappearing 50 years ago, has become as we move into the new century.  With Dopsie and Chenier handing the mantle – in traditional bayou fashion – on to their sons, and performers like Buckwheat Zydeco and Terrence Simien continuing to record and play 250 shows a year, the music keeps on growing and blooming.  ÒBeing able to play music and make a living at it,Ó Simien muses, Òto me, it don't get better than that.Ó