Five days after the all-star Clifton Chenier tribute album A Tribute to the King of Zydeco won a Grammy Award for best regional roots music album, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Arhoolie Records are releasing a massive box set of Chenier’s original recordings.
Clifton Chenier: King of Louisiana Blues & Zydeco contains 67 tracks recorded from 1954 to 1983. The box set samples Chenier’s recordings for the Elko, Specialty, Chess and Zynn labels and, most of all, Arhoolie label. Unreleased in-concert performances also appear on the four-CD and six-LP retrospective, a project that marks last year’s 100th anniversary of the zydeco pioneer’s birth near Opelousas, Louisiana. Adam Machado, executive director of the Arhoolie…
Category: zydeco & cajun
Over the past decade, European archival label Flee has been unearthing some of the globe’s most distinctive sounds. Reissuing out-of-print rarities along with new interpretations from contemporary artists, their albums have included 2017’s exploration of Kenyan Benga music, a 2021 recording of the oral traditions of Gulf pearl divers and most recently a catalogue of Greek orthodox singing from the monastery on Mount Athos. Their latest edition is equally specific, delving into both archival and new French-language Creole music from Louisiana.
Influenced by the birth of jazz in New Orleans, as well as early blues, rock’n’roll and French colonial legacy, this largely African American folk music of the 1950s to the 1980s veers from…
It’s about time. Clifton Chenier finally got the biggest birthday gift of his life. For what would have been his 100th birthday, Louisiana based independent label Valcour Records, who specialize in both traditional and innovative Louisiana music, assembled a stellar cast of movers and shakers to pay tribute to the man who planted the roots of the music that made their careers.
…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…