12/1/2023
Performances and Artists
Reginald Dural was a rising high school athlete when his interests suddenly shifted.
“ I started to take notice of what my father was doing with his music,” Dural tells The Smith Center during a recent phone interview. “What really caught my attention was the control he had over all the crowd when he played. I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’ and I left basketball alone after that.”
Durall’s father just happened to be Buckwheat Zydeco, one of the foremost figures within zydeco music – a regional style developed in Southwest Louisiana by French Creole speakers, swirling the sounds of the blues, R&B, soul and more into something altogether unique.
Before long, young Reginald, known to many even then as “Buckwheat Jr.,” had picked up the washboard – a percussion instrument made of corrugated stainless steel and worn over one’s shoulders – and joined his father’s Ils Sont Partis Band.
“I started as a roadie, and then I started playing rub board,” Dural remembers. “I’d travel with my dad when I could, but I couldn’t fully take the road until I got out of school.”
Dural would go on to tour with his father for decades, and when Buckwheat Sr. died in 2016 at age 68, Buckwheat Zydeco Jr. took the baton and kept the music going, playing the lead instrument of accordion and taking the seven-member Ils Sont Partis Band and its zydeco performances all around the world.
Extended the Legacy
For Dural, who grew up around not only his father but also well-known zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier (“He was our neighbor,” Dural recalls), zydeco music has long been a way of life. But Dural knows that for some audiences, he and his band are bringing something unfamiliar to the stage, and he embraces the role of musical educator.
“A lot of people might think it’s all one culture in Louisiana, but I’m Creole, not Cajun,” Dural explains. “Zydeco is Creole music – Black, traditional Creole music from Southwest Louisiana, played with accordion, washboard, guitar, bass, drums and horns.
“Everywhere I go I try to enlighten people about that,” he says.
Above all, though, Dural says he aims to throw a huge party every time he’s onstage. “My dad used to say, “Just be you and make people happy, and that’s what I’ve been doing. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Lafayette, Louisiana, or Switzerland or Brazil, there’s something about the accordion … When I get up there, I play the music and people are gonna dance and have a good time.”
And the same way his father had him by his side, Dural has his own son, Kyle Anthony Dural, in his band today, playing the washboard the way he himself once did.
“Everywhere I go, my son is on my right. It really is a blessing,” Dural says. “It reminds me so much of my father and myself.”