Corey Ledet: Spitting Fire with the Accordion Dragon

Twice GRAMMY-nominated zydeco singer, songwriter, and accordionist Corey Ledet is the Bruce Lee of the accordion. Ledet, who grew up in Houston but whose deeply musical familial lineage stems from St. Martin Parish, LA, is on a mission to reimagine zydeco for today’s audiences, to share and preserve his Kréyòl heritage tongue, Kouri-Vini, and to ensure that his family’s story two-steps its way into history.

Zydeco music does more than just make you dance: It reflects the culture of the Creole community of southeastern Louisiana and its rich, interwoven heritage, acting as an oral history for aspects of the rarely documented rural Black south. The genre incorporates elements of French, Spanish, German, West African, and Caribbean sounds. It’s impossible to listen to any zydeco song without hearing the music’s strong connection to almost every genre of Black American music, including R&B, gospel, the blues, and, of course, rock ‘n’ roll. 

Ledet’s music pays homage to zydeco’s vibrant history while also making connections to more recent sounds. His tunes tweak the genre’s traditional recipe by adding hip-hop, soul, dancehall, and pop music into the proverbial zydeco gumbo pot. So, let’s get cooking…

Read the whole article, by Shirani Jayasuriya, translated into Kouri-Vini by Jonathan Mayers, in The New Orleans Arts Rag Volume 2