For the past two decades, Buckwheat Zydeco has been spreading the word about that most infectious brand of music – zydeco.

Buckwheat Zydeco will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, at the Maine Center for the Arts at the University of Maine in Orono.

Zydeco, thought to come from the Creolized pronunciation of the French word for snap beans, “les haricots,” is a real musical gumbo, blending Afro-Caribbean rhythms, blues, soul, rock, country and Cajun into an energetic music all its own.

“It’s the beat, the roots of the music, the way the music is played,” explained Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr., the band’s leader. “How can you sit there and not shake anything? That’s how the music is.”

By being out on the road 10 months out of the year, Dural has had a lot to do with the ever-increasing popularity of zydeco. But he downplayed his own role, crediting the late, venerated bandleader Clifton Chenier with popularizing the genre.

“I said, ‘Let me contribute to this music, and take it to a different level,’ ” Dural said by phone from a tour stop in Annapolis, Md. “Every time I see a young person playing an accordion, that’s my reward, seeing that the next generation is carrying on the music.”

Dural, 53, was a relative latecomer to zydeco, which he grew up seeing as his father’s music. Instead, the Lafayette, La., native was playing rhythm and blues and funk on his Hammond B-3 organ, to the chagrin of Stanley Dural Sr., who himself played accordion, although never in public.

The younger Dural started performing rhythm and blues at the age of 9. He continued with that music until 1975, when he tired of the egos involved and decided to quit the business. That’s when Chenier, a friend of his father’s, came calling, trying to recruit Dural for his Red Hot Band.

Out of respect for Chenier, he agreed to take part in a show at Antlers, a club in Lafayette. What he saw changed his life and his musical direction.

“Man, you had older generation, younger generation, people all around the world and everything,” Dural said. “The energy! The energy that came out – it was so much, it was something I’d never seen before. And Clifton Chenier got on that stage and played for four hours nonstop, and I thought we’d play for about an hour. … I couldn’t believe that.”

Dural was sold, and played organ for Chenier for the next two years. Then he taught himself the piano-note accordion, woodshedding for eight months. After that, he formed Buckwheat Zydeco and the Ils Sont Partis Band in 1979. (“Ils Sont Partis” is French for “they’re off,” which is the call that begins each horse race at Lafayette’s Evangeline Downs.)

Since then, Buckwheat Zydeco has been busy bringing zydeco to the masses. The group has earned four Grammy nominations. Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton and Mavis Staples have guested on their albums, while they played on Keith Richards’ solo album. They were the first zydeco band to sign with a major label, inking with Island in 1986, largely through the efforts of longtime manager Ted Fox.

In an age of consolidation within the record business, the group ended up bouncing around among labels, until Dural and Fox decided to create their own Tomorrow label in 1998.

That label has just released the compilation disc “Buckwheat Zydeco & Co.: Tomorrow’s Zydeco,” featuring music from the band and young groups Sean Ardoin & ZydeKool and Lil’ Brian & The Zydeco Travelers. Both of those bands had albums released by Tomorrow, Ardoin’s “Pullin’ ” last year and Lil’ Brian’s “Funky Nation” in 2000.

Lil’ Brian became the first outside artist produced by Dural.

“It was a challenge, an experience,” said Dural. “It took producing to a different level for me.”

With the live experience so much a part of zydeco, one would think it would be difficult to re-create that in the studio. Dural says it’s not.

“We just start playing the music, and the energy is right there,” he said. “It’s just that unique sound of the accordion.”

Dural has made some interesting choices to cover through the years, including Derek and the Dominos’ “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad” (with Eric Clapton as guest guitarist), Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” and the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden.”

So how does Dural know what will work for him?

“I don’t,” he said frankly. “If I can keep a song decent when I cover it, I do it. If you don’t feel it, why mess with it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Buckwheat Zydeco continues to convert the next generation to zydeco. Dural said he sees all ages in his audiences.

“They can be from 8 months to 80,” he said. “As long as they can move. It’s just like going to aerobics, only this saves you a few bucks.”

For tickets, go to the Maine Center for the Arts box office, call 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX or access www.MaineCenterfortheArts.org.