Zydeco
The Cajun accordion — single-row melodeon, bellows breathing like a warm-blooded thing — came upriver in the pockets of travellers who didn’t ask permission.
In the Louisiana swamps it learned the weather: a C chord to cool the air, an F run to bring rain over cane fields, a fast reel to wake the fireflies and make them blink in time.
Old players swear it can push a barge against the current, unstick a stalled engine, lure a lover across the levee in the dark.
The French called it l’accordéon. The initiated call it a hinge between worlds.
Every note is a signal: some for dancing, some for storms. Play it long enough and the reeds start to corrode, not from humidity, but from overhearing the world it came from — a place where music isn’t entertainment, it’s engineering.
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