Oscar Aleman where have you been my whole life?

predatore2005

I want to share with you the link to the Oscar Aleman tribute book fan page in facebook. The book will be out in october! https://www.facebook.com/TributoAOscarAleman Thanks for sharing!

katumba

Definitely my favorite guitarist. I have a few transcriptions in the works which I may import into sibelius. Still trying to find the right thumb pick for his sound, I just don't think they exist. He had a brilliant right hand technique mixing the thumb pick with his fingers. Wonderful syncopation!

kevorkazito

Jazzaferri wrote:

When hw was bailing out of europe back home as the nazis took over france his national got confiscated as they supposedly wanted the metal for industrial purposes.

Probably just ripping him for his axe as he wasnt white.

That's interesting. Did you read that somewhere? I'd like to read that book if you did.

You are probably right about the motives for jacking his axe.

spatzo

Oscar Aleman was a really a nice guitarist and I think he was absolutely more a showman than a poet. It is very pleasant to hear him play and I feel he was a guitarist where Django was artist.

He had been of course hardly traumatized by Django in 1934 and always was in competition with him as saxophonists were when Charlie Parker was alive (they all used to play on the West Coast when Bird was in NYC)...

At the end of is life Oscar was playing moreless the way Django played in the thirties. But among Django's contemporary followers I personnaly do prefer the swing of Harry Volpe to Oscar's crazy arabesques.

In the saxophone story perhaps musicians had a greater capacity to increase their own musical personnality and they wanted to do it, by the way even when Parker was the king there still was for each one the liberty to cultivate the sound of the instrument and to get your own voice (see for ex Johnny Hodges or Bechet or Ben Webster, etc...).

But on guitar Django gave no such alternative to his contemporaries...