Zydeco music is ‘a little bit of Cajun and a whole lotta soul.’ Here’s where to hear it.

A fusion of Louisiana accordion music with Afro-Caribbean rhythms, blues, and R&B, zydeco is the irresistibly toe-tapping music of the Black Creole community in rural Southwest Louisiana, often sung in French. Usually fast-paced but sometimes slow waltzes, this music genre’s heavily percussive sound features the distinctive sound of the accordian and the washboard, a corrugated metal vest a performer scrapes with a bottle opener or spoon. 

“It’s a little bit of Cajun and a whole lotta soul,” sings Rosie Ledet in the song “We Call It Zydeco.” Eminently danceable, zydeco is native to this region, located more than a two-hour drive west of New Orleans. “If you can’t dance zydeco, you can’t dance—period,” said Clifton Chenier, also known as the King of Zydeco. That's according to Smithsonian Folkways, who call it Cheiner's mission statement.

The late Chenier would have turned 100 on June 25, 2025. The pioneer of zydeco was a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner (like the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Frank Sinatra) in 2014, and a tribute album was released last year (2025) featuring singers, musicians, and bands, including the Rolling Stones, covering 14 of his songs. The album won the 2026 Grammy for Best Regional Roots album.

“Clifton Chenier, the best band I ever heard, and I’d like to hear him again,” Mick Jagger told Richard “Dickie” Landry, a saxophonist who played with Chenier’s band. In 1978, Landry to the frontman for The Rolling Stones to hear Chenier in Los Angeles. Landry talked about his time with Jagger in the article “Clifton Chenier: Still the King,” published on the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s website.

After performing at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Mick Jagger, a fan of the King of Zydeco, was asked to join Valcour Records’ Chenier tribute album, and he agreed. “Mick sang Chenier’s most famous song in French and played the harmonica in London. Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were recorded in New York and the basic track in Lafayette,” recalls John Leopold, executive producer of the album, and former director of the Arhoolie Foundation. “We wanted it to sound like a big house party—and it does.” The same song, with Chenier singing it on the other side, was also released by Smithsonian Folkways, which bought Arhoolie’s catalog in 2026. 

The history of zydeco and its unlikely champion

Chenier, often credited with naming the music genre, was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, a small city in St. Landry Parish, located north of Lafayette. He didn’t invent this music style. 

“Zydeco started with Creole juré music, handclapping, foot-stomping, and singing, long before accordions, fiddles, and drums were added to it. A lot of songs came from work songs in the fields,” says Terrance Simien, band leader of Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience, a two-time Grammy winner, who plays a zydeco song in the Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog. “He didn’t invent it; the Creole people did.”   

In 1929, Amédé Ardoin, a Creole singer and accordionist, "crafted tunes that poured the foundation for Cajun music and zydeco. Today, every Cajun and Creole band plays the 'Eunice Two Step,' first recorded by Ardoin and Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee in 1929,” says Herman Fuselier, executive director of the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission, host of the radio show “Zydeco Stomp,” and a music columnist for The Advocate, serving Southwest Louisiana. 

In the 1940s, Chenier played with his brother, Cleveland, at house parties in Southwest Louisiana and in Texas, where he worked at an oil refinery in Port Arthur. Chenier asked a work colleague, Cajun metalworker Willie Landry, to design a metal rubboard (frottoir) to replace the washboard Cleveland hung from a rope around his neck. Today, his son, Tee Don Landry, still makes frottoirs at Key of Z and has sold them to fans around the world, including pop star Rihanna.      

(You can’t tell the story of New Orleans without its Black Catholics.) 

In 1963, Chenier’s cousin, Texas blues musician Lightnin’ Hopkins, brought the founder of Arhoolie Records, Chris Strachwitz, to hear him in a Houston dive bar. Strachwitz signed Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana Band to his record label the same night. He urged Chenier to play more traditional music. Ultimately, Chenier made over a dozen albums for Arhoolie, including Louisiana Blues and Zydeco and Bon Ton Roulet, leading to a national breakthrough for zydeco.

A German-born count and American roots-music preservationist, Strachwitz discovered many bands performing in bars and at house parties in the South. Eventually, he would open Down Home Records shop next to Arhoolie Records in El Cerrito, California, situated north of Berkeley. The documentary This Ain’t No Mouse Music! highlights Strachwitz and his legendary record label, whichwould eventually introduce blues, Cajun, Tejano, zydeco, folk, and other forms of American roots music to the world.  

Where to go to learn more about zydeco

Zydeco music lovers can visit the Opelousas Museum to see video clips of Chenier in American filmmaker Les Blank’s short film J’ai Ete Au Bal about zydeco and Cajun music, backed by Strachwitz. Photos of zydeco bands—like Terrence Simien, Cory Ledet, and Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band, who won a Grammy for the Zydeco Junkie album. 

The museum also creatively explains the history of Creoles in Louisiana, descendants of French and Spanish settlers. Terrance Simiens' song, “You Should Know Your Way By Now (AKA Creole Country),” describes their identity.

“In Terrance's family, they’re every shade of skin color,” says Cynthia Simien, his wife and manager. In 1791, Antoine Simien, a white merchant, left his entire estate to Marie Magdeleine, an enslaved Black woman whom he freed, making her one of the largest landowners in Opelousas. He left his son, George, the 800-acre plantation.

Zydeco fans have moved hundreds of miles to be near Opelousas, the "Zydeco Capital of the World." Trish Ransom lived in San Francisco and moved to Grand Coteau in 1999 after falling in love with zydeco. She’s still there—10 miles from both Lafayette and Opelousas. “It’s happy music. I love the syncopated beat and the unique rhythm of the rubboard. It’s like nothing else,” says Ransom. “I was going to zydeco dances in the Bay Area, held four to five times weekly in the 90s. People said you have to go to Louisiana, where it’s from. So, I went to Festival Acadiens. That was it. Two years later, I moved.”

(This underrated Louisiana parish is brimming with Cajun culture.)

Where to hear zydeco

In Opelousas, Toby’s Downtown is not only a restaurant and bar, but it's also a popular dancing spot for locals and zydeco bands. The St. Landry Parish Visitor Center posts free monthly zydeco jams on its Facebook page. “Before I started this jam seven years ago, Cajun jams were everywhere but no zydeco jams—especially ironic in St. Landry Parish, its birthplace,” says Fuselier. 

Festivals Acadiens et Creoles (October) and Zydeco Extravaganza (May) in Lafayette and Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Festival (August) in Opelousas are just a few annual zydeco events. It’s common for small towns in this region to host festivals that feature the high-energy dance music. 

Travelers should also consider visiting Opelousas Tourst Information Center to see a zydeco timelime with famous musicians, such as Boozoo Chavis, known for recording the first zydeco hit, "Paper in My Shoe," and Buckwheat Zydeco (Stanley Dural, Jr.), who brought the music genre to international, mainstream audiences.

Several venues in Southern Louisiana host weekly zydeco events, such as Buck & Johnny’s, a restaurant in Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, that hosts a zydeco brunch dance every Saturday. Geno Delafose & French Rockin' Boogie, Jeffery Broussard & the Creole Cowboys, and Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws perform here regularly. In Lafayette, Rock ‘n Bowl, a bowling alley/eatery in Lafayette, hosts zydeco dances on Thursdays and Saturdays, and for decades, the New Orleans location has been a popular place to enjoy zydeco on Thursdays. In Eunice, a 45 to 50-minute drive northwest of Lafayette, Lakeview Park and Beach hosts live music performances, including zydeco concerts, year-round. 

(A mecca for rap has emerged in the birthplace of jazz and blues.)