Jeffery Broussard & The Nightime Syndicate

Whatever labels on record store bins might say, music has a way of wriggling out of whatever box it’s put in, every chance it gets. Porous by nature, music is generated by people with curious ears, and their eternal quest for novelty ensures constant change. Take zydeco, a category which is no more than a loose cohesion of place, sound, and memory. The word itself comes from a song about les haricots pas salés, unsalted snap peas, a regional recipe for making flavor despite constraints imposed by a hard world. It is an ethos which precludes rigidity, in music as in life.

In the decade since zydeco first achieved national acclaim, it has continued to evolve while remaining strong in its roots. When Jefferey Broussard came on the scene in the 90’s with Zydeco Force, he was a pack leader among a new generation of zydeco bands. But like many of his peers, he was carrying ancestral melodies. His father, a sharecropper who moonlit as a zydeco star with the Lawtell Playboys, played his accordion at home and at church, and his mother sang the old juré songs acapella, accompanying herself with clapping hands.

To the east in New Orleans, musical continuity works much the same way. Children sneak instruments out of closets and gingerly take them down from a high shelf. Virtuosos start young; many a brass career has begun with a trombone longer than the child playing it. Urban brass music may be a world apart from country zydeco, but these worlds developed side by side. Put them together, as Jeffery Broussard and Romain Beauxis have with the Nighttime Syndicate, and it’s not the differences that stand out, but how effortlessly they blend.

In Louisiana, creating a new sound doesn’t require breaking with the past. For the Nighttime Syndicate, it’s about incorporating different elements into the stew. Put a Sam Cooke verse in a Clifton Chenier song, add some lyrics to Bill Carter’s “Richest Man” that TBC Brass Band’s Paul Chéenne wrote for Jelly Joseph to sing in a duet with Broussard, and mix. The shifts in the flavor may be subtle, but they hit the spot—just like Chenier’s snap peas.