Jazz Partout !
Jazz Manouche dans la plus belle tradition de
Django Reinhardt et ses héritiers
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Jazz Partout !Jazz Manouche dans la plus belle tradition de |
Django Reinhardt – The Founding Father of Jazz ManoucheAll superlatives have been repeatedly used when praising the talent and achievements of guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli. There would be no point in listing them aimlessly all over again, so I will restrict my story to a more music-oriented description, emphasis being in the birth of their music style and in the events leading to the formation of the mother of all string swing bands: Le Quintette du Hot Club de France.
Sections in This Article:Un jazz sans tambour ni trompette Birth of Le Quintette du Hot Club de France This article is quite long and I am planning on still expanding it one of these days, but if you're out for a more concise story to spare the details, you can find it here. Un jazz sans tambour ni trompetteIn 1930s Django Reinhardt combined successfully seemingly irrelevant ingredients:
When Django then met an equally capable musician, Stéphane Grappelli, to match his challenge as a top class improviser, all the pieces found their places. By starting to play the recently developed Afro-American music, hot jazz, in their own way, without drums, horns or piano, they created a new sound, that to this day hasn't lost its freshness.
First InfluencesDjango's knowledge on the repertoire and style of professional Gypsy music dates back to his cradle, his father having been a professional player of violin, cimbalom, guitar and piano and the leader of an orchestre tzigane touring from Belgium through France to Corse to Italy and all the way to North Africa before the First World War. After the father had disappeared from their lives, the Reinhardt family stayed mainly in Paris, where young Django took up banjo-guitar, determined to become a musician. From the people most influential to the development of Django's distinctive playing style, two have been considered to rise above others: Poulette Castro and Gusti Malha. Poulette Castro, player of banduria and other stringed instruments, performed mainly waltzes and the more traditional Gypsy repertoire with his guitar playing brother Laro. Django at his early teens would watch them attentively for hours. Poulette Castro was probably the primary model for Django's famous picking hand technique so distinct from the American jazz guitarists: very fast, strong and accurate wrist movement with the hand and arm loose at all times from the top of the instrument, thus allowing freer movement with greater power. Gusti Malha – banjoist and guitarist, composer of La valse des niglos – brought the use of jazz chords to the world of musette as early as in the 1920s: sevenths, ninths, augmented and diminished chords, passing chords, moving bass lines with frequent use of counter melodies in the lower register. Django picked that all up to elaborate it further, when he as a teenager accompanied already established vedettes like Jean Vaissade or Guerino. Later, at the beginning of 1930s, when painter and photographer Émile Savitry introduced Django and his brother Joseph to the newest jazz records of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Django was hooked immediately. He was already a skilled improviser in Gypsy manner, and he had a wonderful ear for chord changes because of his apprenticeship in Parisian musette circles, where new tunes had to be learned by ear on the fly. Now he heard for the first time properly this new music, where he could take in use all his craft – music with fascinating rhythms, interesting harmonies, virtuosity and, above all, inventive improvisation. The mix of the abovementioned elements proved to be very successful. Although Django never went back to the world of musette and java after forming the famous quintet with Grappelli in 1934, he still continued to be a very sought after session musician, performing and recording with the likes of Jean Sablon and Jean Tranchant as well as jazz greats like Coleman Hawkins and Dicky Wells. His vast playing experience had taught him how to accommodate with varying musical styles and formations and contribute the best possible way to the band's sound while being able to make his personal voice heard.
Burning in the Caravan
Django did burn badly, when his wagon burst on fire in the middle of the night in November 1928. Doctors were willing to amputate his leg in fear of a spreading blood poisoning, which could turn fatal. Django refused firmly, but he was having even more serious concerns: his left hand never healed properly, and only thumb, index and middle finger regained their functionality. Still, soon as it was possible, Django's relatives brought him a guitar to cheer him up. Django took it his business to learn newly how to play. It took a couple of years of re-education, but in the end it was a victory for determination: at his early twenties this man was able to outplay any other guitar player using only two fretting fingers. How he did it, remains a mystery, but when we hear the guitar introduction to the tango Carinosa, recorded in the spring of 1931 by Louis Vola et son orchestre du Lido de Toulon, we immediately know, who's behind it. In the next few years Django would polish his mastery in a variety of settings in Parisian music circles, shifting gradually from accordion-combos to more swinging engagements.
Stéphane GrappelliStéphane Grappelli's violin was a perfect match for Django's guitar. Grappelli had also been an accomplished session musician before forming Le Quintette with Django, though in those days he most often played piano, but also violin and sometimes even saxophone. Like Django, Grappelli was primarily a Musician and only secondarily a brilliant instrumentalist. This was well expressed by the British talkshow-host Michael Parkinson, when he in the 1970s introduced Grappelli as "someone, who couldn't play an ugly phrase, even if he tried". Grappelli's musical career started as a child, busking in the streets of Montmarte on violin. In the course from adolescence to adulthood he took every opportunity to play: from accompanying silent films to providing dance entertainment to playing in theatrical revues. In the twenties and early thirties Grappelli established his reputation in Paris as a highly skilled and versatile musician, able to conform to any music style with equal ease. Of course, two such prominent musicians as Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, who also shared a common enthusiasm towards American hot jazz à la Louis Armstrong, crossed paths many times in the early 1930s in various bands before the Great Invention that changed history of music. Jazz-wise the most significant mutual pre-quintet engagements were probably the big dance orchestra lead by violinist Michel Warlop and saxophonist André Ekyan's band accompanying the singer Jean Sablon. Especially Warlop's band employed the best French swing musicians of the era, among them Ekyan and Alix Combelle on reeds and Noël Chiboust and Pierre Allier on trumpets.
Birth of Le Quintette du Hot Club de FranceIn 1934 Louis Vola – future bass player of Le Quintette du Hot Club de France – hired Grappelli as violinist and Django as guitarist to his orchestra playing then at the thés dansants of the hotel Claridge in Champs Elysées. The band played in the afternoons taking turns with a tango-orchestra. When the other musicians of Vola's band went to a nearby bistro to spend their time while waiting for their next set, Django usually stayed at the back stage of Claridge playing his guitar. Eventually the inevitable had to happen: when Grappelli once stayed with Django behind the stage curtain in Claridge, they started playing around on the basis of familiar jazzy tunes like Dinah. It went so well that after that incident Grappelli started to spend his breaks regularly jamming with Django at Claridge. Sometimes they were joined by Vola and the band's second guitarist Roger Chaput, sometimes by Django's guitar playing brother Joseph; the foundations of Le Quintette were thus laid, and a few weeks later they held their first concert, which was an immediate success in spite of the revolutionary line-up – a jazz combo without drums or horns. Although the quintet consisted only of guitars, a violin and a double bass, the sound they produced hinted to a much greater instrumental variation. The rhythm guitars provided a solid percussive accompaniment – la pompe manouche – with tasty accents and occasional tremolos, thus replacing both drums and piano in a conventional jazz rhythm section. Django himself took even more liberties when playing rhythm, which made Grappelli describe his sentiments later in an interview of the French Jazz Magazine: "When I played with Django, I had the impression of having the philharmonic orchestra backing me". And on top of all that there were the breath-taking solos and fascinating musical dialogues of the two maestros.
Rising FameThe recently founded jazz association, Hot Club de France, had begun arranging concerts and jam sessions as well as providing lectures and opportunities to hear new French and American jazz players and records in public. The culturally civilized and socially active founders – especially Charles Delaunay, Hugues Panassié and Pierre Nourry – soon started employing the quintet in their soirées and planning ways to promote this wonderful combo to the attention of a larger public. Thus, after only a couple of months in existence, the quintet played to a full and responsive audience in the famous concert hall Pleyel, where main acts were American stars like the sax giant Coleman Hawkins. In spite of the growing fame in Paris, there was more to conquer. To be able to spread your music to a wider public, you need an object, which can be multiplied, distributed and broadcast: a record. In September 1934 Odeon turned down the quintet's first two recorded sides as too modern, thus never manufacturing any copies of the test pressings for sale. A few months later, close to the New Years Eve, Nourry and Delaunay finally got the quintet its first opportunity for commercial records from a small company Ultraphone. Four sides were cut and released: Dinah, Lady Be Good, Tiger Rag and I Saw Stars.
The International Exposition of Paris in 1937 meant final break-through for Django and Grappelli. The city was full of artists, reporters and curious audience from all over the world. Growing number of American jazz musicians were eager to hear the legendary Gypsy and perhaps even perform or record with him. Many did, and the fame kept spreading. The film Jazz Hot, which was produced in 1938 to promote the quintet's UK tour, has preserved some of the group's revolutionary magic by showing Django and Grappelli first play J'attendrai as duo and then continue playing with the whole quintet.
After the All-Strings QuintetDjango's music and playing evolved throughout his career. Grappelli stayed in London during World War II, so it was natural for Django to make changes to the band, more than just finding a new soloist to replace the obvious gap. Mainly he lead a band, who's instrumentation with one or two reeds and drums was more conventional, but who's repertoire consisted more and more of Django's own highly personal compositions, among them beautiful ballads like Nuages and Manoir de mes rêves and lively swings like Swing 42 and Dinette. It's interesting, that when Django abandoned the idea of completely stringed combo, trading violin to mostly Hubert Rostaing's clarinet, he in addition let the other rhythm guitar go in favour of a drum set. He also adjusted his tonalities according to the nature of instruments: when the significant portion of the tunes with the violin were played in G or D major, he now started using more reed-like tonalities like F (clarinet versions of Nuages, Swing 41) or A-flat major (Dinette). Django also started performing and recording with more complicated formations up to full size big bands. In addition to making new arrangements of his old compositions, he furthermore wrote new material specifically to large orchestras. Some of the new tunes were to stay only as big band versions (Nymphéas), but the majority (Artillerie lourde, Féerie) found their way later to the small combo repertoire as well. Because of the war, there were no American musicians in France, nor were new records imported – even Grappelli was abroad. As a result most of the continent's jazz-related interests focused on one saviour, thus Django's popularity in Western Europe rose to mythical dimensions: his celebrity was comparable to that of the biggest film stars or singers and his records sold multiple times more than what the pre-war quintet with Grappelli had done. Most astonishing was the fact, that Django Reinhardt was equally admired among the Allied and the Axes.
Post-War ElectricityIn the second half of the 1940s Django varied his bands between the all-strings quintet with Grappelli and the band with clarinet and drums. In 1946 Django had made his only visit in USA, touring first with Duke Ellington and then playing with clarinettist Edmund Hall's band in a big dancing restaurant Café Society Uptown in New York. In spite of Django's high hopes in advance he got quite soon completely frustrated. Possessing no knowledge on English language and having only minimal reading skills even in French, he was not in the best of positions for managing his engagements. With Ellington's orchestra Django got to play electric guitar for the first time. The possibility to match easily to the volume produced by drums, brass and reeds was inevitably a positive revelation for him, contrary to the over and over again repeated statement of him having disliked the American "tin pot" guitars he had to play with. However, after returning to Paris Django shifted more and more towards amplification, varying between acoustic guitar, electric arch top guitar and – most often – acoustic guitar amplified through a magnetic pick-up.
In the early 1950s Django started playing with a younger generation of Parisian musicians, whose music had a modern sound: it was more aggressive, harmonically richer, rhythmically more complex – this style was called bebop. This was the music Django had wanted to find in New York five years earlier, but instead ended up playing old time swing in conservative surroundings, which probably was the main reason for his vast disappointment. Now, at last, bebop was found. It was found in Paris and Django could play it with adept musicians using amplified guitar, and the results were once again magnificent. Django's own compositions of this era show a master at work: the slow Anouman brings tears in the eyes, whereas Nuits de Saint-Germain-des Prés is a furious play of rhythm in the manner of Parker and Gillespie.
I have compiled this brief history mainly from following books: Django Reinhardt from Charles Delaunay (English translation from Django, mon frere), Django by Patrick Williams, Django Reinhardt: Un géant sur son nuage by François Billard and Alain Antonietto, Django Reinhardt: Le génie vagabond by Noël Balen, Django: The Life And Music of a Gypsy Legend by Michael Dregni and Django Reinhardt And The Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz by Michel Dregni, Alain Antonietto and Anne Legrand. I have also used Daniel Nevers' excellent liner notes in the CD-serie Intégrale Django Reinhardt from Fremeaux and Paul Balmer's DVD-bio Stéphane Grappelli: A Life in the Jazz Century published by Music On Earth. I have also used my own reasoning based on records and photographs.
This page was last edited 2007-04-04 |
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Django's complete command over his instrument is all the more astonishing, when one remembers, that he only had three fully functional fingers in his left hand: as a result of a severe burning accident at the age of eighteen, his ring and little fingers had been paralysed to immovable hooks. Django – then banjoist of a famous musette accordionist Alexander – had just received a proposition from Jack Hylton, "Paul Whiteman of England", to move to London to join his jazz orchestra. Because of the accident, jazz and fame would still have to wait.
