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SNAPPY BEAT

THE KINGDOM OF ZYDECO

By Michael Tisserand

Arcade Publishing, 382 pages, $29.95

Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales” (“The Snap Beans Are Not Salty”), first recorded in the early 1930s and arguably the unofficial anthem of zydeco music, is a song about poverty: The legumes lack flavor because there is no money for salt pork or other meat to toss into the pot.

More than 60 years later, the lively lament–now better known as “Zydeco Sont Pas Sale,” after Clifton Chenier’s latterday version of the song–remains a perennial crowd-pleaser. Meanwhile the black Creole dance music’s fortunes are at an all-time high.

Once confined almost exclusively to the back roads of Louisiana bayou country, the accordion-driven zydeco beat moved increasingly into the mainstream in the 1980s and ’90s, turning up in films like “The Big Easy,” on Grammy-winning pop albums such as Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and in TV commercials for cars, beer, soda and cereal. Zydeco musicians have been guests on “Saturday Night Live,” hung out in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, appeared at the Summer Olympics and chatted on late-night talk shows. But even as the syncopated sound has continued its assault on the national consciousness, the culture that spawned it remains deeply embedded in the Louisiana prairies, author Michael Tisserand writes in “The Kingdom of Zydeco.” There, he says, it “defines a way of life that is both rooted in tradition and as contemporary as next weekend.”

A New Orleans journalist who was introduced to zydeco 15 years ago at age 20, Tisserand delves into the music’s past and present in “The Kingdom of Zydeco,” one of the first in-depth histories of the sound and a well-researched, insightful introduction to the culture that spawned it. Respectful but not overly reverent in his approach, Tisserand explores the origins of the word “zydeco”-pronounced ZY-de-co and believed to have been derived from the French les haricots and a West African phrase meaning “I dance”–and traces the evolution of the music from the arrival of the accordion in Louisiana in the mid-1800s to the modern era. He also describes the influence Cajuns have had on zydeco, which is often erroneously assumed to be simply “black Cajun” music.

The Cajuns, who migrated to Louisiana in the 1700s from French-speaking Acadia (now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island), and Louisiana’s black Creoles, who were descendants of other French settlers, once sharecropped the same fields and share a hefty chunk of cultural history, including cross-pollinated culinary and musical influences. French remained the traditional language of both Cajun and zydeco musicians, but by the mid-20th Century the styles began to diverge, with Cajuns incorporating country and western influences and Creoles drawing inspiration from blues and rhythm and blues.

Today’s Cajun bands, Tisserand observes, generally feature the fiddle as a lead instrument and tend to perform more songs in French. In zydeco, the accordion reigns supreme. Zydeco bands also feature the rubboard, a corrugated metal washboard-like percussion instrument with West African roots; Cajun lineups seldom do.

Louisiana-born Chenier, Tisserand writes, is generally credited with designing the first modern rubboard in the 1950s, transforming the unwieldy instrument into a corrugated steel vest worn over the shoulders and played with spoons or bottle openers. Chenier’s brother, Cleveland, probably helped design the device and is remembered as one of zydeco’s most innovative rubboard players. But it was Clifton, with his evocative singing style and masterful way with the big, piano-key model accordion, who would be crowned (or possibly self-crowned) the “King of Zydeco”; by the 1970s, he had made his royal status official by sporting an elaborate gilded crown onstage, apparently with scant sense of irony.

” `I heard somebody make a statement one time, where it’s all a gimmick,’ ” C.J. Chenier, who heads up his late father’s band, observes in the book in a conversation about the crown. ” `It wasn’t no gimmick to my daddy.’ “

The elder Chenier, the most influential of the many zydeco artists profiled in “The Kingdom of Zydeco,” began his recording career in the 1950s. He recorded for a number of labels, including Chicago-based Chess, California-based Arhoolie and Chicago’s Alligator Records. Record-company executives and producers who worked with Chenier, including Alligator’s Bruce Iglauer, recall that while the singer worked hard to please onstage, he could be suspicious and difficult to deal with in the recording studio.

Iglauer, for example, relates in the book how Alligator licensed and released Chenier’s previously recorded album “I’m Here,” which went on to garner a Grammy Award in 1984 in the traditional/ethnic category. Iglauer was looking forward to personally producing the follow-up, but as recounted in “The Kingdom of Zydeco,” the eagerly awaited studio session ended in disaster:

” `We made a deal and shook hands on it, and we agreed on some of the songs. He had to have his check cashed before he started, and then he was determined to do the whole album in three hours. He was doing one take on everything. The first songs sounded terrible, and the engineer realized there were dead speakers in his amp. So he remiked it, and we continued, and it became clear that he was not doing the songs that had been discussed. So we got about ten songs in the can, including the first ones where the amp was working improperly, and he said, “OK, I’m done.” . . . He was adamant that he wasn’t going to record anymore.’ “

Chenier’s wariness, Tisserand writes, was typical. Throughout his career, perhaps with good reason, the singer feared that alternate takes from a recording session might be used on other records without permission or payment.

Chenier’s health deteriorated throughout the 1980s. Diagnosed with diabetes, he underwent dialysis treatments three times a week and was told not to tour, but he routinely defied doctors’ orders. Chicago-area club owner Bill FitzGerald recalls in the book how he made arrangements for Chenier to receive dialysis treatments at a local facility during his dates at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn. (Tisserand mistakenly refers to it as Fitzgerald’s, with a small “g,” and to its owner as Bill Fitzgerald.)

While on tour in fall 1987, Chenier told members of his Red Hot Louisiana Band that they would have to continue without him; he was going back home to Louisiana. He died that December at age 62; a crowd estimated at 4,000 turned out for his funeral at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Lafayette.

In recent years, Chenier’s crown has passed figuratively to zydeco stars such as Stanley Dural Jr., better known as Buckwheat Zydeco, who has recorded with Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and other big names in pop music. Meanwhile, Tisserand notes, younger black and white musicians in the U.S. and abroad have merged zydeco with rap, rock, hip-hop and other musical styles, giving rise to bands such as Pennsylvania’s Zydecoal, Australia’s Psycho Zydeco and Denmark’s Captain Crawfish and the Jumping Zydeco. Predictably, as has happened in blues and folk music, such hybridizations have sparked debates in some circles over the relative importance of cultural authenticity and what constitutes “genuine” zydeco music.