About BZCC and Zydeco and Cajun Music
About the Birmingham Zydeco Cajun Club (BZCC)
BZCC promotes Cajun / Creole / Zydeco music and culture:
The Birmingham Zydeco Cajun Club (BZCC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that helps create opportunities for the public to experience the blend of musical instruments, styles and cultural heritages that result in uniquely American music genres: Cajun / Creole / Zydeco. Toward this end, BZCC helps to organize events and makes information available to the public on the BZCC website and the BZCC Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/people/Birmingham-Zydeco-Cajun-Club/61571399255493/
Our Mission:
· “Grow the Audience” for Cajun / Creole / Zydeco Music in the Birmingham area
· Create a sustainable ecosystem to benefit all participants: (1) Bands + Musicians, (2) Venues + Small Businesses, and (3) the Public
What We Do:
· Match Bands to Venues: We help match bands that play Cajun / Creole / Zydeco Music to public venues in the Birmingham, Alabama, area that will book them for a gig.
· Promote Events through our Website & Social Media
· Provide Financial Assistance to traveling bands to ensure the band will profit when playing in Birmingham, before the audience is fully grown.
BZCC membership has its privileges:
BZCC provides certain information and opportunities (including exclusive members-only events, advance information on future events, notices, reminders and more) to BZCC Members only.
BZCC Members, Donors, Sponsors:
BZCC seeks members (including individual and corporate donors/sponsors) to support its cause; please see the information listed under the Join/Donate tab.
Tax deductible acknowledgement:
Because BZCC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, membership and donations may be tax deductible (depending on the tax status of the member/donor). Contribution receipts or acknowledgement letters for donors and members will happily be provided by BZCC to members/donors for tax purposes.
Birmingham appreciates Cajun / Creole / Zydeco music:
As you may know, interest in Cajun / Creole / Zydeco music has been around Birmingham for many years. Previously the Association of Cajun Music Enthusiasts (ACME) did a wonderful job hosting Cajun / Creole / Zydeco dances in the Birmingham area, until the organizers retired. The Birmingham area has hosted some of the great names in the business, including Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, Jeffrey Broussard, & The Creole Cowboys, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band, Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble, Beausoleil, and more. These events have been a mix of public events (such as the Attalla Heritage Day (held in Attalla, Alabama, each October), and City Stages for the 20-year life of this three-day arts and music festival (held in downtown Birmingham, Alabama from 1989-2009)) and private events that are open to the public and feature Cajun / Creole / Zydeco bands (these have been held at various venues including the Concordia Club, Kelly Ingram VFW, and various church halls and event spaces, including Our Lady of Lourdes (Huffman Road) that has hosted several zydeco bands in recent years thanks to Marty & Kathy Brill). Birmingham also has local talent: Michael Johnson and the Birmingham-based Swamp Poppas perform for special events around the city (including the Gumbo Gala, and more).
Cajun / Creole / Zydeco Music is Uniquely American and FUN!
Cajun / Creole / Zydeco music are uniquely American music genres that are FUN and danceable! Cajun music developed earlier than Creole and Zydeco music, but each musical style has been influenced by the other and share “traditional” songs; some simply refer to these musical styles as [American-style] “French Music” or “Louisiana Music.” Cajun / Creole / Zydeco music is uniquely American, FUN, danceable and developed over years specifically to “pass a good time.”
About Zydeco Music
What is Zydeco Dancing?
Click to see samples:
Zydeco Line Dancing 1
Zydeco Line Dancing 2
What is zydeco music?
Zydeco music originated in southwest Louisiana – the seeds of what is now known as zydeco started in the early 1800s as a mix of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean musical influences. Creole people (the descendants of French colonists in Louisiana that have African heritage), created what was known as French music (or le musique Creole, also known as ‘la-la” music), which was originally played in small clubs and dancehalls using accordions, fiddles and corrugated metal (rub boards) as percussion. Amédé Ardoin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amédé_Ardoin ) made some of the first recordings of Creole music in 1929. The name zydeco is thought to come from a quick pronunciation of the French phrase “les haricots [ne] sont pas salés” (which means: “the snap beans aren’t salty,” indicating the lack of salted meat to use when cooking beans, meaning extreme poverty). This phrase including the words “les haricots” (pronounced: leZ ar-ee-Coe) was used in a popular song (by Clifton Chenier (1925-1987), who brought blues into the musical mix; ultimately the words “les haricots” blurred together into a single word pronounced (and now spelled) ‘zydeco’ which describes both the style of music (zydeco music) and an event where this style of music is played (e.g., going to the zydeco). During his life, Clifton Chenier received awards from the National Heritage Fellowship and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Posthumously, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2016, the Library of Congress deemed his album (Bogalusa Boogie) to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
From "A Short History of Zydeco (by Scott Billington)", in Zydeco Crossroads ( http://zydecocrossroads.org/2015/01/short-history-zydeco/ ) “The rollicking dance music called zydeco is a quirky invention that could only have happened in Southwest Louisiana, where descendants of French and Creole-speaking African Americans (who today call themselves Creoles) merged their ancient songs with a rhythm and blues beat. The essential instruments are an amplified accordion, and a frottoir or scrub board, a corrugated sheet-metal vest played with bottle openers that is surely one of the loudest percussion instruments ever invented. Electric bass, electric guitar and a drum kit provide the propulsive groove.” “No one could have predicted that such an idiosyncratic and regional style would flourish into the twenty first century, or that Louisiana’s Creoles would hold so tightly to their music, even as English became their dominant language and as their rural lifestyle slipped mostly into the past. Yet, at trail rides, rodeos, dance halls, church dances and almost any celebration, zydeco is a rallying point of the culture, and if many zydeco musicians have enjoyed the opportunity to tour the world, the music is most vibrant at home.”See Full Post: http://zydecocrossroads.org/ (An Interactive History of a great American music form.)
For more information on Cajun and Zydeco Music Traditions (with video), see
https://www.louisianafolklife.org/lt/articles_essays/cajunzydeco.html
or read the article of this same title, by Barry J. Ancelet, available at
https://www.louisianafolklife.org/
About Cajun Music
What is Cajun Music?
Cajun music is a type of folk music, originated by the French-speaking Acadians (Cajuns) who migrated from Canada to Louisiana in the mid-18th century, when Louisiana was a Spanish colony. Cajun musical instruments are primarily the accordion and fiddle, supplemented by guitar, triangle (a "tit fer"), bass and drums, depending on the size of the band. Traditional songs are sung in the Cajun French dialect, but younger bands may sing songs (or parts of songs) in English. Cajun music developed over the years by people gathering socially to “pass a good time” so songs are typically described by the type of dance associated with the rhythm and style of the song such as two-step (4-beat count) and waltz (3-beat count).