What makes Cajun music Cajun, and Zydeco music Zydeco?
Cajun is white, and we blacks in Southwest Louisiana call ourselves Creole. Zydeco is more based on R&B, Cajun is based more on country. In addition to R&B, modern Zydeco blends Afro-Caribbean rhythms, American blues, soul and rock. Do you find the music to be as successful at uniting people as it does musical genres? Just look at the crowds at our shows. We get all generations and all kinds of people. We welcome everybody, and Zydeco is something anyone can get into and like. We want everyone to have a good time and forget about their troubles for a while. Your longtime friend and manager, Ted Fox, wrote that you are a “consummate old-school performer.” What does that mean? Well, I do like to please my audience, and I work hard on every show. Twenty years after getting into the business, Buckwheat Zydeco is comprised of the same core group it started with back in the 1970s. How important is family, both the musical one and the blood one, to doing what you do? Lee Allen Zeno, my bass p
