Corey Ledet was born in Houston but has deep roots in Louisiana’s St. Martin Parish, where his musical family includes his great-grandfather Gabriel, who played professionally with jazz pioneer Bunk Johnson, and grandfather Buchanan, who helped develop the distinctive zydeco rhythms as drummer with Clifton Chenier and Rockin’ Dopsie. 

Young Corey took up the drums at age 10 before moving to the accordion, and he has been a mainstay on the Louisiana-Texas dance scene ever since. His 2021 album Corey Ledet Zydeco earned a Grammy nomination, and included a few songs sung in Kouri-Vini, a distinctive Louisiana Creole dialect that Ledet first learned as a child from his elder relatives. His adult interest in the language has grown, and Ledet has become an impassioned supporter of its regeneration, so much so that he wrote his entire 2023 album Médikamen in Kouri-Vini, and currently uses it often in his live shows, regarding it as an important connection to his authentic heritage as zydeco. Ledet is a popular performer around the world at festivals and in concert halls, inciting crowds to get up and dance to tunes like “Médikamen” and his rollicking cover of Fats Domino’s “Goin Home Tomorrow.”