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Exhibits

To most people, zydeco appears as quintessentially Louisiana as gumbo. Certainly, the music originated among black Creoles of southwest Louisiana. But the swamps of southwest Louisiana spill across the Sabine River into southeast Texas, and the music originally known as "la-la" quickly trickled west, too. There it fused with blues to create a new sound that came to be known, spelled, and recorded as zydeco.

Black Creoles from Louisiana began moving into southeast Texas in search of better jobs during the first half of the twentieth century. As they resettled, so did their music. The book, Texas Zydeco, (UT Press, 2006) describes how many of the most formative players and moments in modern zydeco history developed in Texas, especially Houston. As the new players traveled back and forth between Houston and Lafayette, Louisiana, they spread the new sound along a "zydeco corridor" that is the musical axis around which zydeco revolves to this day. Author Roger Wood and photographer James Fraher spent a number of years traveling this corridor, interviewing and photographing hundreds of authentic musicians, dancers, club owners, and fans. As the photographs in this exhibit make clear, zydeco, both historically and today, belongs not to a state but to all the people of the upper Gulf Coast.

About the Texas Zydeco exhibit: The exhibit, Texas Zydeco, features 40 matted and framed (16 x 20 inches) black and white photographs with an introduction panel.

Texas Zydeco has been exhibited at Texas Folklife Resources, Austin, 2006 and at the Witte Museum, San Antonio, 2007.

Roger Wood and James Fraher

For exhibit leasing information contact:

Texas Folklife
1317 S. Congress Ave.
Austin, TX 78704
512-441-YALL (9255)
e-mail info@texasfolklife.org