Zydeco

ZYDECO. Zydeco is a type of music that evolved from an acoustic folk idiom known as la-la, dating back to the 1920s and unique to black Creoles originally from rural southwest Louisiana. The modern form emerged in southeast Texas in the late 1940s and 1950s among immigrants from this ethnic group, who came to cities such as Houston and Beaumont to find employment. There they fused old Louisiana French music traditions with urban blues and R&B to create a distinctive sound...

Click here for full text of article on the Handbook of Texas Online, courtesy of the Texas State Historical Association.