Father of Zydeco Amédé Ardoin honored for musical legacy

14th April 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

Life as a rambling musician in 1930s south Louisiana was one of frequent peril, especially for a Creole who, on a daily basis, faced the dual challenges of scraping together a living and treading lightly and carefully along the complex, vague lines of social and economic segregation of Jim Crow.

Much like his country blues equivalents in the Delta region of Mississippi at the time, accordionist Amédé Ardoin revolutionized American folk music while encountering the results of institutional racism along the way, as he hoboed from gig to gig and, in so doing, became the father of what we now know as Cajun and zydeco music.

In early October 1933, for example, following a show at a fair in Acadia Parish, an argument exploded into gunfire that ended with Ardoin nursing several shots in his arm and side. His colleague, Douglas Bellard, was hurt even worse, getting a slug straight into his side. What’s more, according to an article in the Acadian-Signal newspaper, Ardoin and Bellard were shot while they were onstage.

The newspaper reported that “evidence showed that the musicians were shot in the back from the outside of the building through a window while they were playing.”

Ardoin recovered from the incident and continued to change the face of music for another half-dozen years, but the grinding poverty and the racially-oppressive atmosphere in early 20th-century Louisiana soon proved too much to overcome for the diminutive, unassuming musical legend. According to familial oral history, as well as much subsequent historical research, in 1939, Ardoin suffered a vicious, racially-motivated beating that included being run over by a car that crushed much of his head and throat.

The attack, according to tradition, severely impacted his singing voice and his mental acuities to the point where he could no longer play or even communicate coherently. As a result, he was placed in a state mental hospital in Pineville, La. in 1942, dying there that November and being buried in an unmarked grave in the hospital cemetery’s “colored” section.

While Ardoin himself then faded into obscurity for several decades, the musical foundation he laid down during his two decades of playing house parties and formal dances had already taken hold and swept into the Creole culture and society.

Ardoin’s travels, along with the 34 seminal recordings he cut over his career, influenced subsequent generations of Black musicians who shaped Ardoin’s accordion virtuosity, haunting voice and immense repertoire and musical adaptability to create zydeco music. Beginning with the king of zydeco, Clifton Chenier, and filtering down to modern zydeco masters who continue to experiment with the basic sound of Ardoin’s work.

Ardoin also significantly impacted white South Louisiana Cajun artists, leading to the malleable, shared musical legacy that feeds and enriches zydeco and Cajun to this day. With a repertoire that bounced from traditional blues to dance music to reworkings of medieval French chansons, Ardoin kept ’em swinging across Acadiana.

In his day and time, evidence of his exploits, while scarce, do exist and testify to Ardoin’s importance. A May 1931 ad by Boudreaux’s music store in the Lafayette Advertiser newspaper, for example, announced the arrival of a slew of new records by Ardoin and peers, a sale done in response to “[h]undreds of requests [that] have come in by our French record dealers for a special release…”

“These records were recorded in New Orleans very recently,” the promo added, “by characteristic singers and players famous throughout the beautiful Teche Country. Your French People will go wild over these wonderful records. They are just the kind the French people will like – the finest French Acadian records released to date.”

Journalist and musician Ben Sandemel told The Louisiana Weekly that Ardoin became a forerunner of zydeco and Cajun music by encompassing and embodying the heady cultural gumbo of 20th-century south Acadiana.

“In Ardoin’s skilled hands, the accordion served as an apt interpretive vehicle for the region’s rich, hybrid culture,” Sandemel said. “His repertoire included such European song forms as the waltz and the two-step, Afro-European song forms such as the blues, and African-rooted rhythmic approaches such as swing and syncopation.

“Ardoin embodied this cultural blend, and spurred its evolution through his original lyrics, urgent vocal style, improvisational skill and nimble playing which kept people dancing.”

While for decades Ardoin’s influence – indeed, even his very existence – had been overlooked, he’s now getting the recognition he deserves. In addition to his musical and family descendants, as well as in-depth historical research and writings, various institutions have honored him with ceremonies, monuments and other landmarks.

In 2018, a carved steel statue of Ardoin was unveiled at the St. Landry Parish Visitor Center in Opelousas, and just last fall, the University of Louisiana-Lafayette proposed naming him “Honorary Dean of Creole Music.” In addition, several towns, cities and institutions have put in motion plans to plant lemon trees in his honor, symbolizing the way Ardoin soothed his throat and preserved his voice by sucking on a lemon he carried with him.

The latest such planting ceremony was held last month in Baton Rouge, where a group led by Lieutenant Gov. Billy Nungesser turned over the soil for a lemon tree and dedicated a plaque in Ardoin’s honor near the State Capitol building.

Nungesser told The Louisiana Weekly that he was inspired to help plant a lemon tree at the Capitol when he attended the statue unveiling in 2018 at Opelousas. Not only was Nungesser blown away by the throngs of Ardoin descendants, fans, musicians, scholars and officials at the ceremony, but Ardoin’s extraordinary life, as well as his sad death, also made a deep impression on Nungesser.

“He was admired by so many,” Nungesser said. “To see his family members there, to hear about the tragic end to an amazing talent, it kind of stuck with me.”

Nungesser said it took six months to get official approval for the lemon tree project, and it required a little doing to locate and invite Ardoin family members, musicians, and government and tourism officials to the planting.

But Nungesser said it was worth it to recognize such a towering Acadiana figure.

“He set the foundation for zydeco music,” Nungesser said. “He was such a courageous talent. There’s so many stories out there about him that still need to be told. He was just one of those relentless, incredible people [in Acadiana history].”

Perhaps most amazing about Ardoin’s tale, Nungesser said, is how he managed to bring together Creoles and Cajuns, Black people and white folk, both musically and socially. Nungesser said that Ardoin braved the often violent, bigoted nature of segregation and the dangers that being a traveling musician of color that confronted him throughout his life.

And it’s Ardoin’s ability to both transverse and minimize racial boundaries and social mores that make him a legend and a trailblazer, a fact shown by Ardoin’s lifelong partnership with influential Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee, with whom Ardoin recorded and performed. A July 1931 Lafayette newspaper ad, for example, previewed a “special dance” at Antoine Duhon Hall, with music by “Amede Ardoin & McGhee [sic] of Eunice.”

“[Ardoin] was also important in challenging the segregation that characterized his time, by recording and performing openly and often with his musical partner Dennis McGee,” said decorated folklorist, author, scholar and poet Barry J. Ancelet. “I don’t think he was doing this as a cause. I think he was doing it because they made great music together.

“But this collaboration was unusual for the times, and he ended up paying the ultimate price for it, dying as a result of a brutal beating he received while he was playing music in a context that didn’t know or understand his relationship with his white benefactors and partners.”

One of Ardoin’s descendants, through both music and family, is his great-great-nephew, Sean Ardoin, who has in the past played zydeco with several family members, and who for the last 20-plus years has fronted his own bands, Sean Ardoin-n-Zydekool, Sean Ardoin and R.O.G.K., and Sean Ardoin and Kreole Rock and Soul.

Ardoin, who performed at last month’s lemon tree planting and has been nominated for two Grammys, said he strives to carry on his great-great-uncle’s legacy of innovation by blending zydeco with current sounds in hip-hop and R&B.

“Amedee is the father of our music, there’s no getting around that,” Sean said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep the Ardoin name at the forefront, so that it’s always in the conversation when speaking about the music.”

Sean said that while he loves traditional zydeco, and while several of his relatives continue to play in that style, he’s tried to bring the music into a new era, just like Amédé forged his own new path.

“Throughout all that time I was doing the current version of our music,” he said. “I have done it and I am pushing the music forward. I have cousins who love playing traditional so I let them do it. He was a trailblazer and I’m a trailblazer… gotta keep movin’ in the spirit of Amédé!”

This article originally published in the April 13, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.