“When I was small, my mom would have zydeco on the radio, but I didn’t like it. I liked rap and stuff like that.”

The young man making that statement is Brad Randell, the 19-year-old Opelousas resident who, with his band the Zydeco Ballers, is becoming one of the most sought-after young zydeco musicians on the local trail-ride, nightclub, and festival circuits. So what happened to turn a typical rap-loving teenager into an exceptional accordion-squeezing one?

“As I grew up, my daddy showed me an accordion and tried to teach me to play. Once I started learning, I hated rap. I don’t like rap now.”

Randell is reminiscing in the front room of his family’s home, occasionally getting up to take a phone call about his gig in Lafayette later this evening (“We’re ready,” he assures the caller) or to answer the front door to admit one of his neighbors or his older brother (“We’re some busy people around here,” he laughs).

Despite the money that Randell earns from his increasingly frequent appearances—he performs three or four nights a week—and despite his having graduated from high school last year, he still lives with his family. But he doesn’t mind; the less a budding zydeco musician has to worry about the rent and bills the better. Besides, his parents let him keep his white “Brad Randell and the Zydeco Ballers” tour trailer in the driveway.

“They don’t want me to leave,” laughs Randell. “They say I’m fun to be around.”

The lack of familial tension involved in Randell’s gradual transition from a private citizen to a public performer is instructive. Later this week, probably not far from wherever Randell will happen to be performing that same night, the controversial “Family Values” tour featuring Korn, Ice Cube, Limp Bizkit, Rammstein, and Orgy will roll into Lafayette’s Cajundome. Vehemently opposed by area churches, the concert has served to highlight the growing cultural rift between whatever “family values” are anymore and popular music. Zydeco, on the other hand, drives no such wedge between parents and their children. On the contrary, it seems to bridge the generation gap. Randell’s paternal grandfather also played the accordion (“He played little house dances—they didn’t have the big clubs with the big PA systems”), and his maternal grandfather played house-dance Cajun music. “I guess I picked that up,” Randell says.

Randell’s triple-note accordion is itself a family value. After belonging to his paternal grandfather, it belonged to his father, who played it mostly in private. Now, one good retuning and a pickup installation later, it is one of the two Randell uses in public, even though the trail rides, Randell says, subject it to a good deal of dust. His other, his B-flat single-note accordion, is a Marc Savoy model.

He plays both on Move That Thang (Bad Weather), his unusually accomplished debut album. Released last July, it has already received zydeco airplay and gotten him invited to the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Festival in Plaisance. Although he was saddled with the unenviable 11 a.m. time slot—due in part to the incompatibility of the uniquely Louisianian cuisine with the stomach’s morning needs, the hordes don’t arrive in full force until the late afternoon—Randell intends to make the most of having gotten his foot in the door.

“It was, like, the last minute when they called me,” Randell says. “They had the bands picked out already, and I didn’t have a CD out at the time. But, when my CD came out, they called me and asked me if I could do it.” Undeterred by the early time slot, Randell accepted. “I’ve wanted to be at the Plaisance Festival ever since I started playing. And they’ve said that next year they’ll give me a good spot, about five or six o’clock.”

Randell recorded Move That Thang at the Kinder studio of Mike Lachney. Of the dozen cuts, only two—Boozoo Chavis’s “Bad Bad Woman” and Beau Jocque’s “Just One Kiss”— are covers. And although echoes of Chavis, Jocque, Keith Frank, and others can be heard in the album’s other 10 tracks (the group deploys a predictable number of woof-woof’s, eh toi’s, and “Yeah, you right”’s), Randell and his Zydeco Ballers have taken noticeable strides toward creating their own sound in the crowded world of contemporary zydeco. Certainly the double-entendre-laden “Pussy Cat Where You At?” stands out, proving that family values have a broader meaning in zydeco than they might elsewhere.

And speaking of double entendres, Randell admits that naming his band proved to be a challenge. In fact, having decided that all the good names had already been taken, he almost settled for “Brad Randell and the Zydeco Performers.” “Then I thought, ‘Everyone’s always talking about balling,’” he says. “That’s how I came up with the Zydeco Ballers.’”

Little Richard’s “Miss Molly” would be proud.

Another new act stirring up trail-ride dust on the local zydeco scene is Kojack and the Zydeco Warriors. The leader of the group, however—Robby “Mann” Robinson—is hardly new to zydeco. As the bassist and co-leader of Zydeco Force, he helped put zydeco on the funky path down which it’s been traveling for several years now.

“When I first heard zydeco,” Robinson remembers, “the way the changes were coming at me, I either had to be super fast or I had to find a shortcut. So a lot of my playing was shortcut. I had to feel where everything was going. Then I realized afterwards — I didn’t know then — that a lot of musicians were saying, ‘Boy, that’s funky!’”

Robinson is hesitant to take credit for starting the funky-zydeco craze single-handedly. He does, however, insist that those who question his account of the music’s development should do their homework first. “You can start dealing with the first Zydeco Force album, go from there, and see what happened. Everything changed.”

One reason that “everything changed” is that no sooner had Zydeco Force disbanded than Robinson began gigging with Keith Frank, who encouraged his bass-playing sister, Jennifer, to emulate Robinson’s playing. Shortly thereafter, Frank became one of the most popular zydeco musicians of all time, ensuring that Jennifer’s Robinson-inflected style would become closely identified with the style.

Kojack and the Zydeco Warriors is Robinson’s first steady gig since the breakup of Zydeco Force. He formed the group in the summer of 1997 after a hiatus from the zydeco world brought on in part by his desire to refocus after his nearly 10 years with Zydeco Force and in part by a serious ankle injury he incurred in a freak roofing accident. The consummate behind-the-scenes man, Robinson knew he’d found the perfect frontman when he saw Joseph “Kojack” Richard performing one Sunday afternoon at “Zydeco Extravaganza” at Lafayette’s Blackham Coliseum. “He had showmanship that was unbelievable,” says Robinson. Richard, however, was less than game. “He was involved in church. But, after we got to talk, I showed him that this could beat that.”

The group’s first recording was a self-financed cassette, the main function of which was to bring the group to the attention of the local zydeco community. On its second album, the recently released Zydeco Tootsie Roll (Maison de Soul), their strengths have begun to come into focus. Mia Terry, Robinson’s 10-year-old drum-playing stepdaughter who’s pictured on the cover and thanked in the notes for her “on-stage performances,” doesn’t perform on the recording, but the album still delivers large doses of youthful playfulness. “Old School Songs,” for instance, consists of playground and pep-rally chants set to a rural zydeco beat, and several other songs feature various members making animal noises. Even the one called “Trouble,” boo-hoo’s and all, feels like a party.

The album has received a warm reception, even landing the group a forthcoming gig at the prestigious Mid City Lanes Rock ‘n’ Bowl, a gig that people involved with the Louisiana Jukebox television show will be monitoring to determine the extent of the Warriors’ appeal. But the group still encounters closed doors. The Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival, for instance, has yet to give Robinson a call. The snubbing is ironic for two reasons: first, one of the festival’s organizer’s is Robinson’s brother-in-law; second, Robinson used to play the fest with Zydeco Force.

Nevertheless, Robinson wants no favors based on past accomplishments. “Because of my reputation, people might look at me and say, ‘O.K., Robby, you can come on.’ But I don’t want that. I want to go because I’m good enough. If I’m not, don’t call me. I’ll still respect you. There’ll be no animosity. But don’t invite me because of my past reputation, because this is a different group.”