Some time ago it struck me that elements of Django's guitar style maybe developed from the accordionists he accompanied in the bals-musette, in particular the rapid arpeggios and the nature of much of the ornamentation, which seem to me to be more accordion- than guitar-flavoured in the first instance, and that he was maybe "transcribing" such elements to the guitar in developing the style known today as Gypsy Jazz. Prior to the 1990s it was also rare to find accordionists as part of at least the more well known GJ groups, however today they seem to be quite prevalent so it is more easy to appreciate potential crossover elements.
I have not seen this suggested in other sources so was wondering whether persons experienced in the genre would agree or disagree with this thought...best regards Tony
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But I think we can all agree that being involved in a band or a genre for an extended period of time will alter our own playing. Moreover we know that Django was not playing with the accordionists just for money, he was experimenting and adding interesting things to the accompaniment that made him stand out among the other guitarists. So it means he had his ears wide open and most likely picked up ideas from the accordion players.
I think if you are interested to learn more about that you should look up things about Le jazz gitano-parisien, interviews of Patrick Saussois, history of accordion in Paris (there are a series of documentaries on youtube in French) rather than looking with the words gypsy jazz. (Gypsy jazz is heavily biased towards the original quintet and will relate the origins to Eddie Lang and Joe Venutti)
In "Django Reinhardt" by Antoinetto and Billard, there are chapters titled "Valses pour Django", "Django, la valse et la banjo", and two or three other chapters that cover this period in detail. I'm pretty sure that these chapters were originally published in "Etudes Tsiganes" as well.
The 1994 revue mentioned earlier contains an enormous amount of information on various kinds of tsigane music - flamenco, eastern violin music/orchestres tsiganes, and jazz manouche are all covered in detail.
As far as Django's own influences, I certainly believe that as was noted earlier, his use of arpeggios, and fast triplet and chromatic runs were all things he learned from the accordionists and not the other way around. No criticism there - the best proof of all this is simply to listen to Django and listen to accordion players from 1924 to 1928. The relationship is beyond obvious.
A Richard Galliano and Birili Lagrene CD from the early 90s called "Viaggio" is really incredible - great playing by Galliano, terrific compositions, and Birili never played better before or since... It's on Spotify, check out Birili's solo on "Waltz for Nicky", it's unbelievable how perfectly he nails it.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9675669t/f136.image
By the way the complete (?) collection of Etudes Tsiganes (1955-1998) has been digitized by the french National Library and is here :
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb343486078/date
Their equipment, strings etc., not nearly as forgiving as what we have today!! WoW
I know nothing of banjo playing.
This is Eddie Peabody from 1929, playing textbook strumming banjo with all it's fast and accurate tremelos and melodic chording. This clip is kind of long at 11+ minutes, but starting at around 7 minutes he plays some variations on "Blue Skies" that are really amazing and show ideas similar to Django's though it's impossible that he'd heard of Django in 1929. Eddie Peabody was just an amazing musician and a wacky guy and for some reason is mostly forgotten today. Also check out "Strum Fun" where he plays a vaudeville version of "Some of These Days" easily as extravagant as anything Django ever played.
Roy Smeck is another:
I guess we know where Eddie Van Halen got it from :-)