Zydeco MIDI Files
Though disputed, it is commonly suggested that Zydeco derives from the French phrase Les haricots ne sont pas salés, which, when spoken in the Louisiana Creole French, sounds as “leh-zy-dee-co nay sohn pah salay”. This literally translates as “the snap beans aren’t salty” but idiomatically as “I have no spicy news for you.” Alternatively the term has been given the meaning “I’m so poor, I can’t afford any salt meat for the beans.” The earliest recorded use of the term may have been the country and western musical group called Zydeco Skillet Lickers who recorded the song It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo in 1929.
Initially, several different spellings of the word existed, including “zarico” and “zodico”. In 1960, musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick wrote liner notes for a compilation album, A Treasury of Field Recordings, and used the spelling “zydeco”. The word was used in reviews, and McCormick began publicizing it around New Orleans as a standard spelling. Its use was also accepted by Clifton Chenier – who had previously recorded “Zodico Stomp” in 1955 – in his recording “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés”, after which Chenier himself claimed credit for devising the word.
In an alternative theory the term derives from the Atakapa people, whose forcibly enslaved women were well known for forming marital unions with male African slaves in the early 1700s.[citation needed] The Atakapa word for “dance” is “shi” (rhymes with “sky”) and their word for “the youths” is “ishol.” In 1528 Spanish people, the first Europeans to contact the Atakapa, translated “shi ishol” as “zy ikol.” Four hundred years later, the mixed-blood descendants of Atakapas and Africans would still sway in synchrony to their raucous music, but with a slightly evolved name: zydeco.
This excerpt is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zydeco
