Accordion player Jeffery Broussard was a member of the band Zydeco Force before going solo with his backing band the Creole Cowboys.
Zydeco is the distinctive, churning and whirling African-American spin on cajun music by French-Creole speakers. The music is heavy on squeezebox and washboard, with zippy tempos meant for the dancefloor and rhythms that draw on the blues, reggae, honky-tonk, waltzes and shuffles.
Broussard is a contemporary giant of the instrument and the genre. Raised on a farm in rural Louisiana in a family of musicians, Broussard’s first instrument was the drums, and his accordion playing has an impressive rhythmic force and complexity, bringing to mind a Hammond organ, a bagpipe or a horn section, depending on how he wields it.
See Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys at Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven, on Tuesday, Aug. 29, at 8 p.m. $12 to $15. 203-789-8281 and cafenine.com.
