Djangomania!

Stringswinger

I read the thread on Dan Kintner's forum and have finally read this thread. Dan took Ted's comments out of context, and his disrespect of Djangobooks.com seems foolish. Michael has provided a cool business and his books are useful to all who want to move their playing along.

Having met Dan, Ted and Michael, I can report that all three are good guys who are dedicated to live jazz (IMHO Gypsy jazz is still jazz, that is to say improvised music with an integral swing element). I attended Dan's (and Barry Warhoftig's) DFNE a couple of years ago. Dan deserves Kudos for doing that. I understand his anger even if he did take aim on the wrong party.

All this bickering seems foolish when we live in an age where DJ's make more than an entire band and have more gigs.

Orthodoxy whether in Religion or music is the product of a small, closed mind ( is that enough to have some middle eastern cleric issue a Fatwa calling for my demise? Bring it on! This red blooded American Biker stands against tyranny in all things). My favorite performers in this subgenre of jazz are Bireli Lagrene and robin Nolan. Those guys mix it up and don't sound like a "tribute band". I have some great archtops (my favorite guitar is my L 5) and some great SelMaccs. They are different colors on my musical pallet. I mix a lot of Jazz together in all styles. I play Django ideas when playing straight ahead "modern" jazz. I play bebop ideas when playing "gypsy" jazz. Sometimes I bring an archtop to a Gypsy jazz gig, sometimes a selmacc to a modern jazz gig.

As I have said in the past, guitar players are second class citizens in the world of jazz to horn players and piano players. One of the things I like about the subgenre is that here we guitar players are well respected .

We should all be supportive of each other's musical endeavors and collectively try to stem the tide of death to live music, especially live jazz.

As a jazz guitarist who has played for 32 years, I resent any newbies who think that if I don't conform to their idea of how to play "Gypsy" jazz or what instrument to play "Gypsy" with, that my music is somehow diminished. If what I'm doing is musical and is reaching people. Its good. I'll still be playing jazz while they are parroting someone elses solos.

United we stand. Divided, we will be playing in our living rooms while the DJ's get paid to play junk.

To all my friends out there, Cheers. To the Django Nazis (and any other Nazis musical or otherwise), may your days on earth be short.

Marc

www.hotclubpacific.com

Gadjango

Man, this topic always seems to get the discussions going! It always amazes me how torqued people can get about this stuff. The dogma seems shortsighted and off-base and doesn't end up serving anyone in the long run.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is how I wish there were more people willing to break out and take the style of GJ to new places. I'm not sure what that would look like and have my own opinions about what I would like and what I wouldn't like, but I think the reason people are so enamored of Django Reinhardt is because he was a true original. Django was creating something new and pushing the boundaries of the music of his time, which is a big part of why we still listen to him. I guess we can debate how original his approach really was, but to me that's unimportant since obviously it was good enough and appealing enough for all of us to still be discussing it on this forum.

Anyway, as much as I can't quite put my finger on what this new take on things would look like, I liken the it to the way (mostly) younger people continually deconstruct popular music in an effort to put their own stamp on things. To me, this is exactly what Django did. I'm not saying he was a punk-rocker, but if Django had been approaching things the way many of us do, he would've probably stuck to playing traditional gypsy tunes and maybe some musette, but fortunately he wanted more than that from his playing and pursued jazz whole-heartedly

I like GJ as it is and am happy to listen to the classic recordings as played by Django and reinterpreted by current artists, but would love to hear someone take the spirit of this music and push it somewhere really fresh and new. Personally, I would like to hear someone retain an acoustic approach, but experiment more with different rhythms and song structures while still retaining the essence of GJ and unfortunately I have a lot of practicing and woodshedding before I will be able to do that, if ever.

That said, I like that Romane and Stochelo seem to be willing to apply the style to standards of different eras. Their treatment of Brubeck's Blue Rondo Ala Turk is a great example. The first time I heard that I was so psyched! Now if someone would just do a GJ take on Monk's Epistrophy that could hold a candle to the versions with Coltrane I would be a happy man.

trumbology

Gadjango wrote:

Man, this topic always seems to get the discussions going!

Yup, the documentary just doesn't merit that much discussion--it's fluff. But it skirts some topics that are lightning rods; hence the endless lamentations.

Gadjango wrote:

One thing I've been thinking about lately is how I wish there were more people willing to break out and take the style of GJ to new places. I'm not sure what that would look like and have my own opinions about what I would like and what I wouldn't like...

What do you think about what Stephane Wrembel is doing these days? (Unfortunately, is isn't well documented on commercial CDs.)

Gadjango wrote:

but I think the reason people are so enamored of Django Reinhardt is because he was a true original. Django was creating something new and pushing the boundaries of the music of his time, which is a big part of why we still listen to him.

A big reason I can't stop playing the original QHCF recordings is that they just groove so hard.

Here's a heretical analogy.

The traditionalists in the 3rd-wave ska revival (The Slackers, for example) are versed in a whole range of Jamaican beats--from ska to rock steady to reggae.

In the studio, they recreate the textures of 1960s ska and rock steady. They do this with period instruments, and though recording and mixing techniques. They've found (rediscovered?) the recipe for the killer groove. They aren't interested in pushing the boundaries the way that modern reggae artists are, mixing together reggae and hip hop and whatnot.

Ska fans probably don't spend as much time griping about the conservatism of this approach because it's party music and it brings them joy. But in jazz, this approach is associated with old white guys in straw hats playing dixieland and with Wynton Marsalis.

Of the traditionalist Gypsy Jazz that I haven't liked, I thought it simply suffered from lack of deep swing -- the problem isn't in the traditionalist approach, but in mediocre or bloodless execution.

I like my downtown-NYC, deconstructionist jazz, Tom Waits, Bill Laswell mixing trip-hop beats with sitar players and tabla drums, the occassional Beastie Boys record, all that stuff. But I'm also completely happy to hear Django's grooves recreated faithfully while musicians like Fapy or Dave Biller make new solo statements on top.

...younger people continually deconstruct popular music in an effort to put their own stamp on things. To me, this is exactly what Django did. I'm not saying he was a punk-rocker...

I'd like to hear more about how you hear Django deconstructing and recombining musical devices, from all phases of his career.

I like GJ as it is and am happy to listen to the classic recordings as played by Django and reinterpreted by current artists, but would love to hear someone take the spirit of this music and push it somewhere really fresh and new.

Me too. I think there aren't enough important players who think conceptually, or at least have new conceptions that move me personally. Is there anything about the instruments or rhythms that make it harder to fuse Gypsy jazz with other styles? Or is it just the temperament of the musicians? I dunno.

Neil H.

Gadjango

trumbology wrote:

What do you think about what Stephane Wrembel is doing these days? (Unfortunately, is isn't well documented on commercial CDs.)

I haven't heard Stephane's newer stuff and have only heard a few tunes on his website, but from what I gather he's doing some interesting work within the form that I would really like to hear. That said, I do have a live version of him doing Montagne Sainte Genevieve and the moody intro vibe he goes for in that song is a small example of what I'm talking about. He's using the traditional instrumentation and sounds, but adding atmospherics and a minor ambiguity before diving into the meat of the tune. I guess I like that droning, creepy sound and like that he's willing to experiment and mess with an old classic instead of just playing it down.

I'd like to hear more about how you hear Django deconstructing and recombining musical devices, from all phases of his career.

Not sure I have the knowledge to speak to that as well as others here, but I often liken Django to being the Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix of his time. Jazz was the "hip" popular music of the day and whatever you think about his importance or originality, he did things on the guitar that no one else had done yet. His playing had all the freshness, pyrotechnics, chops, showmanship and flash required of a true guitar hero. Who else playing jazz guitar at that time even compared? Eddie Lang, Charlie Christian and maybe Oscar Aleman? And none of them sounded remotely like Django (maybe Oscar, but he had his own great stylistic idiosyncrasies.)

Me too. I think there aren't enough important players who think conceptually, or at least have new conceptions that move me personally. Is there anything about the instruments or rhythms that make it harder to fuse Gypsy jazz with other styles? Or is it just the temperament of the musicians? I dunno.

The instrumentation certainly has its limitations, but after hearing Stochelo and Romane cover Blue Rondo I knew there was a lot more room to move than I'd previously heard evidence of. It was just nice to hear 2 great contemporary players mow that song down. I think what struck me about it was how it still sounded recognizably "Gypsy" for lack of a better word. My 2 cents.

Cuimean

Interesting observations, Neil. Going back to your ska analogy: We had a whole neo-traditionalist scene here in L.A. in the mid to late '90s, and I noticed that most of the bands that made a big stink about being "authentic" did so to mask the fact that they spent more time listening to old records than playing. To use your term, they grooved the least. I was just recently watching a bootleg of "Dance Craze" and I'm still impressed by The Specials, more so than any other post-'60s ska band. They had a really deep understanding of the music they were playing but they were also totally of their own age. "Nite Klub," "Concrete Jungle," and "Ghost Town" are at once of their genre and transcendent of it.

(By the way, I don't think you're being heretical at all. Many of those Jamaican session guys (and even some of the modern players) were excellent jazz musicians. And I'll be damned if I don't hear some Django in Lynn Taitt's guitar solo on "Magnificent Ska.")

Okay, I'm getting pretty off-base here. I think what I'm trying to say is that if there's anything I personally would like to see in GJ's future, it's not an infusion of other music, but a larger number of players with their own voices. Django, Baro, Matelot, and Crolla were all playing similar repertoire on similar instruments at around the same time, but afficionados can usually tell them all apart within a couple of bars. Today, players like Romane and Koen De Cauter are still playing in roughly the same format on roughly the same instruments, but are also nearly instantly recognizable. Of course, that individual's voice is often defined by their preferences, which may include some wildly varying forms of music. But when those influences manifest themselves organically, the results can be pretty stunning. A recent example is Shawn Tubbs' tune "Bugsy's Buggin'," from the last Virtual GJ CD that Zoot put together. Shawn's definitely playing within the Django style, but his fat vibrato, sly dissonnances, and occasional James Burton-isms give his lead playing its own distinct voice.

I've harped on this junk in the past, but if anyone wants to check out the outer limits of this music, here are a few recommendations:

Anything by Cordacor. Some of it is straight weird, some is straight swing. Much of it falls somewhere in between.

Christian Escoude's "A Suite for Gypsies." It's a really ambitious album for guitars and a small chamber orchestra.

Hùrlak - Selmer-style guitars, upright bass, and guests on accordion, violin, and piano playing acoustic jazz based on the music played by gypsies from Eastern Europe to Spain. But is it "gypsy jazz"? I don't know.

That's all I got right now. Shoot...I'm trying to figure out a way to tie this in to the original posts about "Djangomania!" How 'bout this: the more widespread North American re-kindling of interest in Django is still pretty young. Maybe in a few years, these kind of discussions about dogma and pushing limits will be rendered irrelevant as the individual players mature and come into their own.

- Rod

Teddy Dupont

I find this thread has taken on a rather frivolous tack and feel it is necessary to bring it back to a more serious discussion of the really important issues.

Why was the young Babik not recognised?

The problem is that we tend to think of him as a rather rotund (a PC word for fat) individual with a piece of old kitchen rug stuck on his head. However, as a young man, he had a somewhat angelic, diffident appearance as you will see below.

trumbology

Teddy Dupont wrote:

I findl this thread has taken on a rather frivolous tack and feel it is necessary to bring it back to a more serious discussion of the really important issues.[snip] .... we tend to think of him as a rather rotund (a PC word for fat) individual with a piece of old kitchen rug stuck on his head.

In the spirit of Teddy's course-correction for this thread, I'll just point out that if I had ever had the thick, lucscious hair in evidence in the "very young" Babik photo, and had ended up in middle age with only a few strings to grow long and comb over, I would not be able to resist the lure of the hairpiece, kitchen-rug looking or no. It was so far down for Babik to fall!

But I've never had nice hair. Thank god. Else what would motivate me to play guitar?

n

sockeye

I was just recently watching a bootleg of "Dance Craze" and I'm still impressed by The Specials, more so than any other post-'60s ska band. They had a really deep understanding of the music they were playing but they were also totally of their own age. "Nite Klub," "Concrete Jungle," and "Ghost Town" are at once of their genre and transcendent of it.

Not to get too far off topic, but weren't they great? I've not heard a ska band since that excited me like them. Then again, I was about 14 when I saw them play.

I don't think analyzing what makes great music great -- you just know it when you hear it.

Cuimean

trumbology wrote:

In the spirit of Teddy's course-correction for this thread, I'll just point out that if I had ever had the thick, lucscious hair in evidence in the "very young" Babik photo, and had ended up in middle age with only a few strings to grow long and comb over, I would not be able to resist the lure of the hairpiece, kitchen-rug looking or no. It was so far down for Babik to fall!

What about Boulou? In his early days, he could match Babik folicle for folicle. And now look at him. He has resisted the lure of the hairpiece AND defiantly grown the remaining shrubbery long, which does little but call attention to that shining pate.

Thank goodness we're moving the discussion in this direction. I'm sick of all the newbies who blab on endlessly about moustaches. Why would I want to copy Django's moustache, hair for hair, when the genre has moved on to include some really incredible hair styles?

(This may be a little off-topic, but those wishing to check out some boundary-pushing stuff should look into Jo Privat. Late in his career, he was doing things with sideburns that few others had the courage to try.)

Teddy Dupont

Cuimean wrote:

This may be a little off-topic, but those wishing to check out some boundary-pushing stuff should look into Jo Privat. Late in his career, he was doing things with sideburns that few others had the courage to try.)

Here we go:-