Intro and a Question

Mandobart

Hi everyone; some of you may know me from mandolincafe. I've been getting into Gypsy Jazz and Hot Club music this year, really enjoying it. It started wneh I was recruited to play in a Klezmer band and grew from there.

My favorite instruments to play these days are 5 string viola and OM. These are not traditional gypsy jazz instruments. Are GJ players like bluegrass players, where it is very strict what instrument you play and how you play it? Would I be committing a major offense/faux pas if I showed up at a hot club jam with an octave mandolin? I'm learning the jazz chords and la pompe on the OM, and I think it sounds good, but would it be "wrong"?

Jazzaferri

Personally......I quit playing BG cuz I was always getting in trouble with the BG police.

I think Mando and viola are grat additions to the genre. Have to have pretty fancy chops to get mando sounding right with the groove but go for it.

I suspect there are some traditionalists out there...but in my limited experience haven't come across anything like the bg police

klaatu

There's a whole mando section at Django in June, and one fellow shows up sometimes with a cello!

I've always wondered why mando is not a part of the European GJ scene. The sound is certainly an interesting complement to the GJ guitar, and there are some fine jazz mando players out there. As an aside, a lot of people don't realize this, but Jethro Burns of the Homer and Jethro comedy duo was a hot jazz player.

Bouzouki, anyone?

anthon_74

Yeah the mandolin is cool with gypsy jazz. You may not get in with the modernist "masters", because they seem to want an extremely minimalist approach to harmony (they only really want the bass notes to ring out from the rhythm players), but as Klaatu said, there's several mando players who show up at django in june each year.
I personally like the early django stuff the best, where you can hear the treble notes in the accompaniment, and mando works quite well in that regard.

Anthony