Fapy unleashed

scot

Post-modern mumbo-jumbo aside, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. With Django (and some other guitarists of his generation), we are talking about true jazz musicians who could play any tune in any key, who could hang with any other musicians. Django in particular was able to synthesize all the music around him into something original and new, that was accessible and pleasant to many ears, and that appeal has endured over several generations right up to today. He certainly wasn't a "rebel" in the way we think of hip musicians today. He wanted to be successful in the mainstream. And if we don't have any recordings of lengthy jam sessions, that does not mean that he did not put plenty of effort into his recording sessions - I believe he gave his all at those sessions. After all, in those days, that was how you made your mark. That's why that even after all these years lots of people still buy Django's recordings.

What is called gypsy jazz today is not jazz. It's more of a highly developed form of folk music, that started in the 1970s and originally drew it's entire style from Django's early recordings, kind of like the way bluegrass today draws almost entirely from Bill Monroe. The only thing that has happened in the intervening years is that guitar technique continued to improve to the incredible level that we have today. Musically speaking, almost nothing has happened, even though some players like Fapy produce charming and elegant music, and others like Tchavolo and Birili produce passionate and intense music. It's not original. Even Birili said that if you want something new don't look to gypsies for it. Birili's own best playing has come on recordings he made with other musicians like Richard Galliano - he played like a god on the two recordings he made with Galliano back in the 90s.

Gypsy influence on Django? It's hard to find anything you can positively define as "gypsy music". In "Latcho Drom" what you see is gypsies playing the local music of wherever they happen to be - just as it has always been. Probably the nearest thing to true gypsy music ever heard in public was the vocal music heard first at the restaurant "Yar" in Moscow and then in the earliest Paris Russian cabarets like the "Chauve-Souris". I don't think this kind of music was influential on Django.

Django was truly the kind of musician that comes along once a century - the genius who can easily find respect among elite musicians and find success with the general public. That other genius Matelot Ferret was exactly correct in his assessment of Django, just as he was in his often quoted advice to his sons: "Take some influence from Django but don't copy." They are among a very few guitarists in this small corner of the music world who paid any attention, though.

As for the Dead, I wouldn't trade "Workingman's Dead" or "Terrapin Station" for any live recordings I ever heard.

Jeff Moore

Don't know what you mean by "hip musicians today" as rebels or "post modern mumbo jumbo" but I'm curious. If by mainstream you mean Django enjoyed fame and money, no doubt. But was jazz mainstream in 30's France?

When the French government was delivering the gypsies to the Germans for "summer camp" and were attempting to ban swing, Django, formed a more American style swing group in Nazi occupied France. Whatever inner motivations he had, I don't know, but contemporaries perceived it as rebellious. When the French national anthem was banned, Nuages became the alternative national Anthem. When the American occupation made it hard for him to play, he was defiant and played anyway.

The fact that he knew the fretboard makes him a jazz musician?
He was probably a jazz musician, but is that all?
I think he was many kinds of musician, till the definitions get tangled. It's in large part the tangling that defines what is inappropriately labeled Gypsy Jazz. Gypsy Jazz is the recently adopted label for the music he (and the Hot Club Paris) initiated. Even if he believed he was a jazz musician, what are we to do when he's playing and writing debussy or flamenco sounding stuff? We can amend the definitions or just try to take the guy as we find him and categorize for convenience, and caveat for clarity.
No doubt he was a jazz musician

scot

For 40 or more years, many pop culture figures including artists and musicians have taken positions in active opposition to the middle-class ways and means that made them wealthy - that's the "rebel", even when the pose is false as it usually is. This does not define Django Reinhardt or the world he lived in at all. This kind of money-making scheme hadn't been dreamed up in Django's time. And I suppose that I consider looking at history contextually to be a post-modern endeavor. I'm old-fashioned that way - I am only interested in what actually happened.

The subject of jazz in the occupied territories during WW2 is a thoroughly misunderstood topic which has been discussed at length on this forum several times. The definitive English text is Mike Zwerin's book "Le Tristesse de St-Louis - Jazz Under the Nazis". Jeff, before making comments on what happened to jazz musicians in Paris/Europe during the war, I strongly suggest that you read this book as it covers what actually happened as opposed to modern projections about what happened. It also has some interesting observations by jazz musicians who lived behind the iron curtain.

I'm sure that there are as many definitions of jazz are there are people who listen to it. I can't define it so I'll cop out and say I think I know it when I hear it, even if I don't like it. It's a frame of mind... Many shredders and orchestral musicians and flatpickers - all kinds of musicians, in fact - have great chops but are not jazz musicians, they don't have the frame of mind. Django was not only a jazz musician, he was a great jazz musician. And I agree with Michael Bauer - I don't think that there's anyone playing "gypsy jazz" today who will be known in the years to come as a jazz musician, much less as a great one.

steven_eire

scot wrote:

I don't think that there's anyone playing "gypsy jazz" today who will be known in the years to come as a jazz musician, much less as a great one.

players like andreas oberg and bireli who have played bebop and other styles are reasonably well known outside gypsy jazz circles. I'm going to see andreas play soon, i don't think he is billed as gypsy jazz guitarist anymore and I don't expect most of the crowd will be there because of his gypsy playing.

by the way rimm and other irish people on here, here's the info about that gig:

http://www.jjsmyths.com/special-events/ ... kley-.html

mr arp

scot wrote:

I'm sure that there are as many definitions of jazz are there are people who listen to it. I can't define it so I'll cop out and say I think I know it when I hear it, even if I don't like it. It's a frame of mind... Many shredders and orchestral musicians and flatpickers - all kinds of musicians, in fact - have great chops but are not jazz musicians, they don't have the frame of mind. Django was not only a jazz musician, he was a great jazz musician. And I agree with Michael Bauer - I don't think that there's anyone playing "gypsy jazz" today who will be known in the years to come as a jazz musician, much less as a great one.

Not meaning any disrespect , but how can someone who states that they cannot define jazz, that only "thinks" they know it when they hear it ...how in the world can that person say with such conviction that there are no gypsy jazz players today that will be known in the years to come as a jazz musician?? That's a pretty incredible statement to make given your self described limitations on the subject. As Steve just pointed out, please let us introduce you to the incredible "mainstream" jazz playing of Bireli Lagrene and Andreas Oberg. But don't take it from me. I've spoken with Larry Coryell about Bireli's jazz playing and Larry simply shook his head and called him a genius. As for Oberg, just watch the youtube videos of his playing with American jazz guitarist Jimmy Bruno. Jimmy's highest praise for Oberg's talent and skills after the session says it all. They are both monster jazz musicians and they are acknowledged as such today.

Michael Bauer

Just for the record, I think what I said was that I couldn't think of anyone else in the loosely defined "gypsy jazz" world that musicians from other genres and/of on other instruments consciously imitate. I don't think I ever said none of them would be known as jazz musicians. I'd hate to get into the prediction game, especially about who people will like 100 years from now. At the rate America has been descending into stupidity the last three or four decades, we may find that Kenny G and Grover Washington are the jazz icons of the last century. Most people don't know Sylvius Leopold Weiss, but he was the greatest lutenist of the 18th century, and whose jam sessions with Bach were memorable enough to be wriiten about by one of Bach's sons.

I think alot of todays players are great, and no one can accuse Stephane Wrembel, for example, of being musically moribund. Heck, since he did the Django meets Zappa concert at Django in June a few years ago, he's never been asked back. He's brought in Indian music and other world music into a Django inspired framework, and I, for one, think Django would have loved it. This may seem to prove Scott's point about GJ becoming more a folk music, since gypsy jazzers seem alot more orthodox about technique and about what's acceptable musically. But maybe that's what comes from looking backwards for inspiration instead of forward, or at least sideways? I don't know, but I do know that I find myself guilty of the same attitudes sometimes, so this is as much self-incrimination as it is accusation.

But I don't think all jazz has to be cutting edge to be legit. The world is full of average bands who are, and whose audiences are, content to recreate the vibe of an earlier era, or just hear good playing, even when it leads us nowhere new. Not everyone loves Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane. I think Johnny Smith was a beautiful player, and no one would say he was pushing the envelope. I think that's where gypsy jazz is now, offering great technical playing in a retro format. I happen to like it, but I also don't not see anyone out there with the gift for melodic invention that Django had. people can be remembered for other things: "pyrotechnics", for example. Do I not got hear a good solid band just because I think they are not immortal? If everyone did that, where would the true geniuses go to play? And with whom would they play while they developed their chops?

I don't think anyone has come close to Django...yet...and when someone does, I'm not sure it will be admired or accepted by GJ purists. I do think there's room for both the traditionalists and the explorers. One is the sounding board by which we appreciate the other.

Jeff Moore

Scot
If a gypsy forming an American style swing group in occupied France is not rebellious, what is?
If I read the text you suggest, will it tell me this didn't happen or put some other value on it?
Is the "old fashioned" view that this didn't happen?
Was jazz in pre-war, mid thirties France mainstream?
Was the opposition to jazz really coming from the French middle class? Or was the hip parts of the middle class in fact the biggest supporters?
Wasn't the resistance to jazz most importantly coming from folks who owned the recording equipment, publishing companies, and other media?

I like your definition of jazz. Lots of room in it.
Jeff

scot

I certainly did not make myself clear about some things here! Yes, I know jazz when I hear it, even if it is a type of jazz that I don't particularly like - some types of free jazz from the 60s, for example. And I did say earlier that I thought Birili played like a god on some recordings from the 90s and I was foolish to even suggest that he's not a jazz musician. Birili can play jazz with the best of 'em - he's in a class all his own. Andreas Oberg I have not heard for 5 years or so and when I heard him then he just sounded like another young man playing as fast as possible. I'll go look at the videos of him playing with Bruno. People do grow and move their playing along, that's for sure. Other modern players like Adrian Moignard and his circle, they're incredible players who could and probably will push this music far beyond it's current static and folklore-ish condition. Something I hope to see.

I've been playing this music for 17 years and listening to it for a lot longer than that. One thing I have noticed that hasn't changed over the years is that people who don't play this music often find Django's music quite appealing. That interest does not usually extend to modern players, though.

scot

Jeff

There was no opposition or hostility to jazz in France ever. Jazz and jazz musicians were embraced and accepted from the moment they arrived, both by the public at large and by French musicians. The dance hall accordionists found ways to integrate jazz into their waltzes. People loved jazz. Even during the war Django made hundreds of recordings, and was never denounced as a collaborator for this. Though the Nazis officially did not approve of jazz, in reality they looked the other way throughout the occupied countries and especially in Paris. One musician quoted in Zwerin actually said that he never again had it as good as a musician as he did during the war. Things are often not what we might imagine them to be. Do your homework.

OK, I took a cowardly dodge on my own definition of jazz. I admitted it when I did it. If anyone was interested and I know that's not the case, I'd try to do better...

Jeff Moore

You said "the Nazis officially did not approve of jazz". What do you think Django's motivation was when attempting to walk over the frontier to Switzerland? I'm guessing and if you don't like my guess, you guess. A gypsy trying to walk out of occupied France. Why would he do that? Very dangerous! Jazz was officially disapproved. Check it out!
It took a while for the public to understand that the officials were incapable of eradicating it and many Germans in the occupation loved it, but no one was confused as to the policy, at least till now.

The big shots of France had already tried to show the public how deplorable jazz was. Do your homework. They also failed because the lower classes were already full of the rebellious spirit.
The fact that France was peculiarly tolerant of the influx of American black performers among others isn't the same as universal acceptance. There was lots of print with racist and anti-jazz rants. The lower classes and the hip were just loving it in spite of officialdom. In fact the love of the new jazz was often consonant with a distaste for offialdom.

I should have been more clear. I like your definition of jazz, cause its the only workable solution. It simply isn't one thing and one history, but individuals and regions each with a somewhat separate history.

Many make the mistake of thinking jazz always was the socially innocuous stuff it is today. But the "acceptance" of jazz was no different then (in terms of who is doing the accepting and rejecting) as rock in the 50's and Hip Hop in the 90's.
No less than Ms. Gore and our current Secretary of State weighed in in the 90's to help good Americans understand what rot the new music was. Same pattern always. Here and in France.
Like the US, France was never a monoculture regarding the culturally new and regarding race.
Google (Sarkosy gypsies) right now. See what you get. Very old fashioned! I'm not talking jazz now just how officialdom behave.
To imagine that official France had no problem with the influx of American blacks playing wild new music is silly.
The fact that they lost this fight is not the same as saying the fight never happened. French nationalism is alive and well, and never died even when they were overrun by cultural change as in the beginning of the last century.