In the Box - Some thoughts

Jazzaferri

I think you get it. If a person wants to emulate Django or Birelli or Stochelo not for me to judge em. But many never really get their own voice after such a long and intense study of trying to sound like someone else

Imagine if you could quote from memory all of Shakespeare's works. I bet after that amount of intense study one would find Willies phrases coming out a lot of the time. It would take a very great mind indeed to overcome such an experience. Very difficult if one was a playwright to not emit Shakespearisms all the time

Jazz schools pump out a bunch of sax players every year now. The can imitate Coltrane or Rollins or Adderly ec etc. Mostly their playing sounds like someone trying to sound like someone they are not to me. Maybe I am crazy but that's how I hear it

Stochelo learned a huge amount of Django when he was young. Many of his performance phrases are still djangos In his last few albums I hear him really starting to develop his own voice. Birelli left GJ in order to find his own voice and came back to it his own man.

I'm not saying that being an interpreter of someone else's music is in any way wrong, bad or anything. It is just for those of us with a limited amount of time and energy should just learn lots of good vocabulary and use it in as artistic a way as we can as time constraints are very real.

A while ago I accepted the fact that I could never truly play GJ as I am not a gypsy having grown up with a different musical heritage so will always say stuff from that perspective. nor am I a childhood musical prodigy so I will never be Django. T. I love this style of music though so I learn as many of the neat words and catchy phrases as I can. That realization has been very liberating for me.

I will always be way better at soloing on sax as that's what I grew up doing and am content to play lots of rhythm guitar and add my few solo phrases as best I can in as meaningful way as I can when the opportunity presents itself

Elliot

This is why I like following Givone - no 'Django Defeatism'. Plus he happens to be alive, which I consider a distinct advantage. To me Givone sounds like everybody and nobody, as would someone who teaches Grammar, which is what he is. I would think of him in that way.

I seem to remember a Debarre interview in which he insisted that GJ is not culturally dependent, that anyone can master it. After all it is music mostly hybridized from America with the sprinkling of Hungarian czardas and the like still included in the repetoire being the real Gypsy elements. In any case you have to be pretty damn good already just to be able to get into this solo stuff, which is enough of an impediment in itself.

Jazzaferri

I don't think music is culturally dependent, but I do believe we are most fluent expressing our musical thoughts with what we hear and in some cases learn early on. My comment about not being a gypsy was that I couldn't ever express the feelings and all that is inherent in that nuance. Yes we share the feelings of happiness, sadness, joy, etc etc but we do it differently is all. Not better or worse, just different.


I think Angelo is right in that anyone who puts in the time can m,aster the techniques of this style. Anyone, at best, can only express who they are musically. To play anything else comes over as being something else that isn't the player. Like notes technique is just one of a number of important factors in making music.

I believe some people mostly just play notes. That can be very impressive at times but in the end leaves me unfulfilled.

I can usually tell when a person didn't grow up in Canada by the way they choose and phrase their words. Doesn't make what they say any more or less relevant per se but it is noticable.

Lango-Django

This is why I like following Givone - no 'Django Defeatism'. Plus he happens to be alive, which I consider a distinct advantage. To me Givone sounds like everybody and nobody, as would someone who teaches Grammar, which is what he is.

Well said, Elliott!

If you express yourself as well with your fingers as you do with words, you must be some guitar player.