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Lango-DjangoLango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator
edited August 2019 in Welcome Posts: 1,854
Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."

Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
BillDaCostaWilliamsMichaelHorowitzBuco

Comments

  • BillDaCostaWilliamsBillDaCostaWilliams Barreiro, Portugal✭✭✭ Mateos, Altamira M01F, Huttl
    Posts: 631

    Really interesting (if you like that sort of theoretical analysis, which I do).

    Many thanks, Will.

  • scotscot Virtuoso
    Posts: 653

    Whether or not musicians like Roy Smeck and Eddie Peabody (among others) were genuinely great players or just vaudeville tricksters was a common topic of discussion among guitarists I knew back in the 80s - and no one ever thought to put Django in with this crowd. I don't recall if we ever came to a genuine conclusion, but certainly none of us knew it had been the subject of earlier academic discussions. Nothing new under the sun, I guess...

  • BonesBones Moderator
    Posts: 3,319

    Yeah no one with any knowledge of the genre would put Django in the "trickster" category.

  • scotscot Virtuoso
    Posts: 653

    30-40 years ago, there was no such thing as a "genre" of gypsy jazz or anything like it. There was only Django and while none of my guitar-playing friends back then ever had anything to say about him that didn't involve amazement, that might not have been true in the jazz world of that era and earlier. Audiences like tricks - playing 4-hands, stuff like that. One time I saw Bob Brozman (an incredible musician by any measure) bounce a heavy steel bar slide off the strings of a national tricone from about a foot away and catch it as if it was the easiest thing in the world - never missed a note. It must have taken thousands of attempts to get it that perfect... I always thought that Smeck and Peabody were fine musicians who knew some tricks - another form of virtuosity and nothing wrong with that.

  • edited August 2019 Posts: 4,730

    I'd think calling those guys vaudeville tricksters is like saying Cirque de Soleil performers aren't real athletes.


    To add to that, I don't think it's possible to fake virtuosity. Like you can't take an ordinary average musician and by teaching this person a bag of "tricks" they turn out sounding like a virtuoso. You either are or you ain't.

    Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
  • BillDaCostaWilliamsBillDaCostaWilliams Barreiro, Portugal✭✭✭ Mateos, Altamira M01F, Huttl
    Posts: 631

    I wouldn't worry too much about assertions in the text. I read the article as the author wanting to tell a story and having to choose a theoretical framework compatible with the kind of stuff published in the journal (and acceptable for his PhD thesis).

  • Lango-DjangoLango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator
    Posts: 1,854

    According to jazz guitarist and historian Marty Grosz, when many/most American jazz musicians first heard Django, they did put his music in the category not exactly of “vaudeville trickster” but more like “great technique, but not really jazz”

    Marty said that he sometimes heard Django compared to mandolin player Dave Apollon...


    Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."

    Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

    Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
  • Posts: 279

    Interesting read. Especially seeing as he is coming at Gypsy Jazz from Bebop.

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