The first time you heard about Django Reinhardt? First time you heard his music?

mac63000

Back when I started playing guitar about 20 years ago I had a book about the history of the instrument. I remember seeing Django with his guitar, much like @stuology (might have been that same book actually), but as most youths growing up in Seattle, was much more interested in electric guitar (Hendrix, etc) and 100 watt tube amps (poweeeeeeeeer). Later, in the early days of YouTube, a friend showed me the "two fingered lightening" video, which while impressive at the time, the genre/style didn't strike me as one I wanted to get into... Even as my guitar teacher force-fed me jazz theory on a weekly basis.

Years later during my masters program, I was reintroduced to Django by an Italian friend who played the chords to All of Me and challenged me to try the rhythm. I had no idea what I was doing but couldn't get enough of it. Fast forward to today, it's the only music I find myself playing. Now I just wish I had paid attention to the jazz theory I had been taught years earlier!

For anyone who speaks / understands french, there's a fantastic podcast series on France Musique called All that Jazz that did a 4 episode deep dive into Django Reinhardt's life back in 2015. They break it down into different periods of his music and play pieces from throughout his career, including some of the earliest recordings he was on before hot jazz became known as a genre. Highly recommend it!

First episode:

https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/all-jazz/django-reinhardt-1-4-du-bal-au-hot-club-1928-1937-13744

Tomas

Mafia game from my country. Its full of Djangos music and I was fascinated. I had lucky that I found friend, who made this kind of guitar and bought it four mounth ago. I played bass, but we lost guitarist. And now I love it. Because of the PC game :D

Buco

The first time I ever heard about gypsy jazz was on the TV game show in old Yugoslavia: "Kviskoteka" (Quizcoteque). Trivia knowledge type of show. Well on the show they had this "secret guest" segment where three or four people introduce themselves by the same name and contestants have to pick out an actual person by asking "educated" questions. One night the "secret guest" was the band leader of gypsy jazz group (must've been the only one in the country) and afterwords him and his band played on the show and talked a little about life and music of Django. I was immediately bitten by the bug. This was sometimes in the 80's, I had just started with the guitar and was in my teens then. I remember this guy talking about Django, saying how Django basically played with two fingers and despite that emerged through as one of best guitar players and jazz instrumentalist that has ever lived. I was awestruck thinking to my self how is this possible? I have no idea how this band sounded and what would I think if I heard them now but the music was like a drug. Back then the sources for this type of music were very limited so I never got much more then that initial taste of this beautiful, upbeat and virtuosic music. Next time I heard it was on the cassette tape in my friend's car. I never stopped thinking about it though but it was only in late 90's or early 00's when I got my first Django CD compilation. I was very disappointed when I realized Minor Swing wasn't on it.

I wish I could someday find out who these guys were, I still don't know.