How musically educated was Django?

stubla

I teach loads of people as well--and i teach them that the Ear is the thing ---i'm sure you do as well--but theory is just description --not Music.
Stu

Lango-Django

i'm absolutely sure he didn't think ....urghh.... "what tritone arpeggio do i play on the middle eight of Anniversary Song".You may as well subject birdsong to the same absurd anaysis!

No, of course not, but when you learn his solos note for note, you do begin to find certain patterns that do repeat themselves. And analysis of these patterns is not absurd; they're a great way to get some insight into the mind of of a musical genius. I read someone's posting on this site saying that Bireli claimed to have learned over 200 Django solos note-for-note in the course of his studies.

Actually the analogy with birdsong is rather interesting, because it IS subject of analysis by experts... I even have a book containing pictures of common songbirds along with a little computerized doodad that plays a recording of each one's song(s)... I'm no scientist, but I would suspect that ornithologists argue about how much of their singing is instinctual and how much is learned behaviour...

Jeff Moore

I bet Bireli learned those solos sound for sound just as I suspect Django experienced it as he played: without the mediation of musical symbols, and I suspect he was using uncodified and very personally internalized cues. Probably similar to the cues the listener picks up from listening to him. Pretty hard to lay out in language of any form I'm aware of, but amazing enough to motivate thousands of us to devote hours and years to it.
That's not to say that any conceivable way of studying and learning isn't worthwhile, but often I feel like it is hard to communicate about this stuff, using language, if the other person is thinking that there is a pedagogy that if mastered, will reveal the method to play this way. It may be a start, but I suspect it isn't the most auspicious start. But hey, I'm wrong more often than not.

stubla

John McCann brought up the subject of using theory as a way of teaching Djangos concepts---and theres nothing wrong with that of course;even i used the word 'tritone'-- formerly known as the 'devils interval' :-)... but the original question posed was whether DJANGO was musically educated.
Its really like saying someone who can't read words can't hold a conversation--and thats absurd.Music is first and foremost a language after all.
Bireli barely reads a note and almost none of the other gypsy guys i've ever met or played with read notation either(Tcha Limberger and Boulou Ferre being notable exceptions)-- so they HAVE to use their ears--it seems to work for them.
My playing partner Ducato,a superb rhythm player, doesn't even read chord charts let alone notation; but hes one of the most musical people i've ever known and because he doesn't read music he has an amazing ability to memorise a tune after a couple of play throughs--- just like most of the great gypsy guitarists.
Ironically,the best sight reader i've ever known was a leading classical guitarist who had really terrible problems memorising even a pretty basic piece of music.
So sometimes theory can actually get in the way i think--'ear' players like Matcho Winterstein can pretty much play any song in any key because they don't have all this 'naming' stuff getting in the way--Ducatos the same-any tune in any key pretty much.
The ideal of course is to have great ears and great theory(Howard Roberts,Keith Jarrett ,Stan Getz spring to mind) so of course i'm not arguing for NOT reading being a good thing--Django was clearly frustated in his efforts to score larger scale works because of his lack of training. However i still maintain there is far too much emphasis on theory in the current jazz education 'culture' --Ear training and transcribing(which doesn't necessarily mean writing down anything)is the way to go imo.