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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Sarkozy, The Roma And Django

August 22, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

The government of France generated a storm late last week when news broke of its expulsion of Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria. President Nicolas Sarkozy defends the policy as part of his administration’s drive for law and order. Critics say that the dismantling of Gypsy camps and the first waves of deportations of Roma people are human rights violations. They charge that the sweep is a cover to distract attention from the ruling party’s recent election defeats and accusations of campaign fund-raising violations. For an article recapping the situation,Django smoking.jpg go here.
Whatever the facts and claims in this latest chapter of the ancient saga of the Roma, the plight of the Gypsies has generated renewed attention to a Gypsy who has been dead for nearly 60 years. Django Reinhardt may be the best-known Gypsy ever to live in France. Certainly, he was the most famous French jazz musician of the 1930s and a guitarist whose legacy includes dozens of 21st century bands modeled on his Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Here is a rare clip of Django and the quintet, evidently from a promotional film.

The Rifftides archive piece below is from May 15, 2006. It includes links to a site that streams many of Django’s recordings and to a Reinhardt CD set.

Django


Django Reinhardt died on this date in 1953. He was forty-three years old. Reinhardt melded jazz and the wild élan of the gypsy music he grew up with in Belgium and France. He began to be noticed in 1930 when he was twenty. By the mid-1930s he, violinist Stephane Grappellii and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France were sensations of Europe. By the end of the decade Reinhardt was also working and recording with Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Dickie Wells, Rex Stewart and other leading American jazzmen.
A few of his compositions–“Nuages,” “Djangology,” “Manoir de Mes Reves”– are in the basic repertoire. He was memorialized by John Lewis with one of the greatest jazz compositions, “Django.” The spirit and style of Reinhardt’s playing influenced innumerable guitarists, and several groups have patterned themselves on the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, but there has never been anyone like Django. If you need a reminder of or an introduction to his artistry, go to redhotjazz.com, scroll down to “Oh, Lady Be Good” and hear the joy Reinhardt and Grappelli generated shortly after they found each other in 1934. The site offers thirty-eight other QHCF tracks as RealPlayer downloads (complete recordings, not mere samples). This four-CD set at a bargain price is a fine survey of Reinhardt with and apart from the QHCF

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Comments

  1. Mus14 says

    August 23, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    There is a lot of history that mixes the gypsies and jazz. I’ve heard of Reinhardt and more people should read up on this great jazz musician.

  2. I Witness says

    August 23, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    I’m almost old enough to remember WWII in Europe as it was occurring–not just as described in the many books available about
    the conditions for civilians. A definite tinge of Fascism attends Nicolas SarVichy’s expulsion of the Gypsies (whether they be thieves, undesirables, or just inconvenient wanderers). Too bad there isn’t also a phalanx of Resistance heroes still living, and healthy enough to mount major… yes, resistance.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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