Musical Roots

blindjimmy

Hi everyone, so back when i was learning Hendrix , blues etc.. , people were always recomending to go back to the earliest blues players, learn their stuff, and then move forward into clapton, hendrix and such. Now, on this forum, i haven't seen much discussion about learning the music that Django learned as he was growing up , and progressing from there. Now i realize his roots were not in jazz, but aren't a lot of the stylistic ornamentations in his playing derived from the earlier genres ? What do you think ?

Lango-Django

Interesting suggestion, Jimmy... but difficult in Django's case...

From what we know about Django's roots, he learned his basic guitar techniques from older gypsies in his clan, in the time-honoured gypsy manner... but alas, it seems that recordings by this generation of pre-WWI gypsy players are about as rare as rocking horse shit...

According to what is known of Django's life (especially as outlined in Michael Dregni's excellent bio "Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend"), Django abandoned traditional gypsy music early in his youth to go playing a now defunct style of dance music known as "musette"... this style of music seems to have been mostly based upon the accordion, with the guitar or banjo there mostly as accompaniment... but of course, given Django's prodigious talents, it didn't stay in the background long when he hit the scene!

It would seem reasonable to suggest that Django began playing in public as a musette musician because musette offered better paying gigs and more prestige than traditional gypsy music... and this musical experience benefitted Django by building up his chops with long hours of playing every night, as well as probably forcing him to learn chords, arpeggios and rhythms rather different than those he would have learned via traditional gypsy music.

Of course, once American jazz became the rage in post-WWI France, Django soon abandoned musette to play jazz, probably for both economic reasons as well as the fact that his level of advanced single-string technique was so totally unheard-of in the jazz world at that point, that he may have felt that he was almost a shoo-in to go straight to the top. And of course, we can tell just by the sheer joy of Django's playing that he found happiness in playing jazz and liked to express himself, use his natural creativity in improvising and in writing his immortal songs.

So anyway, even though we can get a rough idea of the sort of gypsy and musette music that Django learned and then abandoned in his development as a jazz player, it seems that Django's innate genius in using these techniques to create something all his own is really the beginning of everything... it might be appropriate in this sense to compare Django to American virtuosos like Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs, who learned and then abandoned traditional country and square dance music to create a whole new genre of music that became known as "bluegrass".

Maybe I'm biased, but I would suggest that if you want to hear the roots that preceded Django, listen to Eddie Lang. He doesn't have Django's dazzling speed, but like Django, he was comfortable in almost any musical setting, from playing jazz with Bix, to blues with Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson, to dance/pop music and even classical... and whatever Eddie played was always tasteful, original and musical.

I've read quotes of Django putting Lang down, but the fact remains that he and Grappelli initially got together to emulate Lang and Venuti, and I've even heard records where Django quotes Lang phrases and string bends note for note. Of course this begs some questions: was this was done as mockery? or because some recording executive specifically asked Django to play that way? or did Django actually like and respect Lang as a guitarist? Alas, we'll never know. Grapelli is on record as stating, "Eddie Lang was a superb player."

Eddie Lang is similar to Django in that he came on the scene in the infancy of recorded popular music, so we don't have much idea where he learned his stuff and what was around before him, either. It seems likely that, much like Django, he may have used traditional Italian folk music as a basis for creating his own style (---?). (Lang's real name was Salvatore Massaro)

Sorry, I didn't mean to write a novel, but this is a topic that has always fascinated me. If you are interested in learning more about Lang, there is an excellent website at eddielang.com

Regards,

Will

Lango-Django

We'll see whether this works or not... I'm going to attempt to attach a cut of Django on six-string banjo playing a musette waltz, "Griserie" from early 1928, prior to the caravan fire on November 2, 1928, which changed Django's life and music forever.

As far as I know, this was Django's second recording ; he made four, perhaps on the same day, (believed to have been in March, 1928) with the same musicians: Jean Vaissade on accordion and an unknown slide-whistle player. The three other titles, by the way, were "Ma Reguliere" "Parisette" and "La Caravane", but I don't have any of those three.

The problem is that this cut is in "m4a" format, whatever that means, so I don't know if anyone will be able to open it or not... and so far I've been unable to change it into any other format...

Anyway, take a listen if you are able... this accordion/banjo sound always reminds me of the stuff that they used to play back in the 1950's when I was a kid at the roller skating rink on Saturday mornings- or perhaps some cheesy carnival on the outskirts of Paris where Django's first wife, Florine "Bella" Mayer, would've been out trying to sell her celluloid flowers...

Anyway, it's got a lot of atmosphere, but little to recommend it except Django's mystical presence...

Will

PS If anybody out there ever heard underground cartoonist R. Crumb's 1970's band "The Cheap Suit Serenaders", featuring Crumb on banjo with other instruments including accordion and musical saw... well, the Serenaders were not too far removed from this kind of music!

BIll Brown

Hi All

If there's any doubt that Musette lives just take a second look at Vasle Des Niglos......or any other of the slower more melodic tunesw that we all STILL play !!!!!

BB

Russell Letson

I don't think it ever hurts to at least listen to enough of the roots of a tradition to get a sense of how it got to wherever it has gotten to. In the case of Django, that means musette (not really dead, but perhaps a living fossil), the American and Parisian dance and pop music of the 20s and 30s, early jazz (particularly Armstrong and, yes, Venuti and Lang, as well as Django's contemporary Oscar Aleman). Then keep right on going through early bebop, since that's what Django was responding to in the latter part of his career. Then there's the French classical tradition, particularly Debussy and Ravel, but that's a whole other conversation.

I came to Django by way of Grappelli more than 40 years back, but by then I was already quite familiar with American swing and jazz history, so Django made sense in that context--and when I heard musette, that dropped right in and made sense as well. I think that hearing Django in historical context might counter some of the post-rock tendency to play way too many notes way too fast--to lose the sense that this style rose out of the dance hall and the night-club, that there were occasionally singers, and that many of the tunes adopted as instrumentals started as songs in dance tempo.

blindjimmy

Thanks for the great responses !