‘Clifton Chenier was one of the most influential musicians to come out of Louisiana,” Mick Jagger tells me. “He turned so many people on to the wonderful, free spirited dance music of zydeco. He was a true original, a trailblazer.” Jagger acknowledges that while no music style can be attributed to one artist, “there is not a zydeco band who has not followed the template Chenier created”.
Jagger is not engaging in hyperbole here: Clifton Chenier’s swaggering, accordion-driven sound introduced the Creole music of rural Louisiana to the world – now known as zydeco, the name derived either from the Creole pronunciation of haricots, or possibly a west African word for music-making. Created by the US’s poorest communities, zydeco is very much dance music, and concerts were once held outside to “make the dust fly”, says Chenier’s grandniece, Sherelle Chenier Mouton. At its most elemental, it’s made with an accordion, a rubboard – a steel washboard played with beer bottle caps attached to the player’s fingers to scrape percussive rhythms – and the human voice, and shares characteristics with music made in Haiti, Brazil and other African diaspora nations.
