Clifton Chenier pioneered zydeco, but no one’s more synonymous with the irrepressible down-home Louisiana style of music than Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural – Buckwheat Zydeco. Indeed, Dural and his band “Ils Sont Parti” (They Have Left) are credited with taking zydeco mainstream, even reaching the heights of performing at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics.

Buckwheat has performed for presidents; with a slew of A-list musicians, from Eric Clapton to U2 and the Boston Pops; won an Emmy; and was nominated for Grammys during his illustrious career.

I discovered Buckwheat in the late 1980s, having seen him perform at a Toronto club (after which I had the privilege to interview him), revelling in an energetic performance underlined by rollicking keyboards, punchy horns, shuffling washboards (fascinating to watch in concert), the French-English lyrical to-and-fro, and Buckwheat’s ever-present electric smile.

Unfamiliar with the nuances of zydeco as compared to the similar “cajun” style (generally speaking, zydeco is played by Louisiana’s black creoles with an accordion, while cajun is played by white cajuns with a fiddle), I learned that Dural’s devotion was simply to fun and that he was not afraid to test the boundaries of an already famously feel-good genre through such tongue-in-cheek tunes as “Space Zydeco,” “Zydeco Boogaloo,” and “Creole Cowboy,” along with more traditional fare like “My ‘tit Fille” and “Let the Good Times Roll” – a repertoire honed during his time as an organist in Chenier’s band before striking out on his own.

Sadly, the world lost Stanley in 2016 (to lung cancer) at age 68, but with a catalogue of close to two dozen albums to his name (and performances memorialized on YouTube), the zydeco trailblazer has ensured that les bon temps will continue to roll in his honour for a long time to come.