By the late 1920's, Swing Jazz was HOT in America and catching on all around the world. In France, Django Reinhardt, an illiterate teenage Manouche Gypsy was playing first five and six string banjos, then guitar in the seedy dance halls of Paris. At eighteen, he suffered severe burns in a caravan fire which paralyzed his third and fourth fingers on his left hand for life. Rather than abandon his career, Django invented new ways of voicing chords and solos with only two fingers and emerged from his convalescence an even better guitarist. Upon recovery, he embraced the new Swing Jazz. With Stéphane Grappelli playing violin and his brother Joseph Reinhardt playing rhythm guitar, Django formed the house band of the Hot Club of France and quickly became the leader of the European jazz scene. Their style, while emulating American Jazz and popular European songs, was unique in that they were an all stringed instrument group. Django was arguably the first true solo jazz guitarist, certainly the best of his age by any standard.
After the War, Swing was giving way to Bebop jazz and though Django continued to cut at the leading edge, his fellow European musicians and audiences still clamored for swing and his popularity waned. He went into retirement and sadly died in Samois sur Seine, France at the age of 42. He left over 800 recordings of his musical genius.
Django always identified himself as a jazz musician who happened to be a gypsy. After his death, however, when the rest of the world was forgetting him along with most other swing musicians, the gypsy populations of France and Germany did not. Rather, they embraced him as a great hero of their people and quietly went about learning and preserving his songs, phrases, solos, techniques and style by rote. During this period many formidable gypsy guitarist, such as the Ferret brothers (Baro, Sarrane & Matellot), Patotte Bousquet, Henri Crolla, Tchan Tchou and others, emerged though none rose to Django's heights or became well known to the larger musical world.
In the 1980s and 90s, however, this style of swing jazz boldly played on acoustic guitars and violins without drums, woodwinds or horns reemerged as Gypsy Jazz or Jazz Manouche as it in known in France. Brought forth by great third generation of guitarists like Bireli Lagrene, the Rosenberg Trio, the son's of Matellot Ferre, Boulou and Elios, Raphael Fays, Fapy Lafertin, Angelo DeBarre, Christophe Lartilleux (Latcho Drom), Hans'che Weiss, Dorado and Tchavolo Schmitt, Patrick Saussois, Lulu Reinhardt and Romane. Strengthened by its incubation and the carefully nurtured spirit of Django, it is a highly energetic, emotional yet accessible style.
Throughout, there have been a number of great violinists as well and they have been essential to the preservation and development of the Hot Club, Gypsy Jazz style. Stephane Grappelly is certainly the greatest amongst them all. Unlike Django who died young, Stephane lived and performed continuously into his nineties. He lived to see the resurrection of the style he and Django created and its endearment to an even larger audience. Others such as Schnuckenack Reinhardt, Titi Winterstein, Florin Niculescu and Tim Kliphuis have kept the Hot Club sound alive and extended it to become the modern Gypsy Jazz style we know today.
A fourth generation of players are currently taking the style to new heights. Hot young players like Adrien Moignard, Gonzalo Begara, Sébastien Giniaux, Stephane Wrembel, Costel Nicescu (violin) and Olivier Kikteff rely more on Django's spirit than his songs, playing with tremendous emotional flair and breathtaking technique.
Throughout the 80 years of the development of Gypsy Jazz, the Selmer Guitar has remained central to the style. Django played, endorsed and loved his Selmer guitars. It can easily be argued that if it isn't played on a Selmer style guitar, it just isn't Gypsy Jazz. While there have been modest and in many cases excellent variations such as those by French luthiers Jacques Favino and B. Busatto, the Selmer style guitar in use today remains very simliar to the Henri Selmer guitars that Django played. While owning a real Selmer is the desire of every dedicated player, sadly there are less than 100 now in playable condition. These command prices in excess of $30,000 each, but fortunately, there are many excellent builders of similar guitars that come very close for much less.
Gypsy Jazz is now played masterfully by Gypsies and Gadjos (non-gypsies) alike throughout the world. Every major city in Europe and the United States has at least one group specializing in Gypsy Jazz, bringing Django's legacy to the audiences worldwide. In the US alone, dozens of active groups such as the Hot Club of San Francisco, the Gonzalo Bergara Quartet, Ameranouche, Stephane Wrembel, Alfonso Ponticelli and Babik, to name just a few, are playing regularly in clubs, cafes and festivals. In the Mid-Atlantic, the Hot Club of Philly, Gypsy Roots, the Rick Olivarez Trio, and our own Hot Club of DC amongst others are working hard to bring Gypsy Jazz to a wider audience. And lovin' it!
Welcome to our world..........
Hot Club of DC, aka HC/DC