PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro |
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The First 100 years of Django - 1910-2010
With few exceptions guitarists, great and good, far and wide and of many musical persuasions willingly acknowledge the genius that is Django Reinhardt. His influence, either overtly or implicitly, may be detected in the playing of so many of them, like the DNA of our forebears; for here we are talking guitar evolution – as in, it’s in the genes, we are talking guitar-genomics! Advancements in technique are passed on through the food chain, are absorbed and digested by so many voracious consumers. He re-wrote the technical repertoire of playing guitar, albeit out of necessity, through a fateful accident; introducing a bewildering range of dynamic possibilities, raising the bar for subsequent musicians and presenting an awesome challenge; Where do we go from here? His imagination was staggeringly fertile, boundless, joyfully unpredictable and this it was that compelled that other great gypsy master, Baro Ferret to declare that, Django’s technique didn’t frighten him, it was his imagination he couldn’t match.
Not for Django, repetition and excess. The great gypsy’s musicality sets him apart. That phrasing and restraint are uniquely his. When listening to up-tempo Django for instance, he is ever-varied and so often understated, showing yes, as he could, an awesome turn of speed one minute but hitting us with a staccato sequence of accentuated octaves the next. His playing breaths, allows space. He never smothers with a continuum of relentless notes, forming confused stacks of sound, like so many packs of discarded playing cards. Playing and toying with a phrase, he turns it inside out, exhausting its possibilities, punctuating and accentuating then moving on, always moving on! The development of his solo in ‘I’ll see you in my dreams’ is a master class in improvisation. He develops the solo to increasing levels of complexity and tension. At no point does he compromise the integrity of his art through crude exploitation of technique for its own sake. This was Django’s way; the consummate musician, the alchemist who turned base metal into golden threads of sound. Let’s not forget that his formative influences, the popular melodies and dance forms of the 1920s -30s, together with his own deeply imbued gypsy traditions, sat along side American jazz but also the influence of Classical composers, forming his unique musical sensibilities. He loved and listened to Debussy, Faure and Ravel and would talk of the importance of the bass in the work of J. S. Bach. Django’s was a sophisticated ear. Although untutored he enjoyed that natural predisposition of the musical aristocrat; the ability to discern the tasteful, the essential, to express that eclectic depth of understanding through his own art. He also possessed that other unfathomable gypsy skill; photographic musical memory. Django - I'll See You in my Dreams Tablature - I'll See You in my Dreams
Hints and clues of a more modern thinking emerge in his later 1940s forays into be bop, evident in the phrasing of his Rome sessions with Stephane, where audacious semi-tones colour the takes. His playing here speaks of the future and contrasts at this point with the rest of the band. His American trip, not the success he envisaged on the one hand, affected him deeply musically. Like Dizzy and Bird, Django was an innovator, unbridled by convention. His new approach would bear greater fruit when going electric: not just electric but distorted electric! He was having a ball. Playing with those youngsters at Club St. Germain, the reborn Django, inventive and daring, was opening new frontiers himself. This was a musician reinvigorated after recent years of self reassessment and disappointment.
‘Django taught us all’ was Chet Atkins’ incisive one phrase appraisal of the great musician’s impact. ‘There will never be another Django’ is mine. The impact of Europe’s greatest jazz musician is incalculable. He influenced guitarist as diverse as Johnny Smith, Les Paul, Charlie Bird, Joe Pass, Chet Atkins, Jimmy Hendrix, BB King, George Benson, to name but a few. Some guitarists rediscover him or come to him later in their careers; a notable example in this respect being the unique Hank Marvin. Gypsy Jazz bands proliferate at a bewildering rate worldwide. The great exponents, Bireli, Stochelo, Angelo, Boulou and Elios, Fapy and Tchavolo are testament to Django’s unique and ever-spreading legacy. Wouldn’t it be intriguing to conjecture therefore Django’s reaction to what we now call ‘Gypsy Jazz. He would most certainly recognise the form, much dependent on his early acoustic roots and swing style; the musette waltzes, the up- tempo swing. He would perhaps be perplexed that the impetus of his later playing towards modernity was somehow absent? He would though be immensely proud of his legacy and equally proud of the amazing musicianship of artists with unique takes on his style paying the ultimate compliment. Surely he must watch and listen in the wings, when every year since the 1970s pilgrims from across the globe, assemble in Samois Sur Seine to get as close as possible to their master!
Thank you Django!
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2010
marks 100 years since the birth of the greatest guitarist the world has ever
seen; his unique vapour trail indelibly etched on the musical firmament, his
influence continuing unabated, welcomed with acquiescence across generations,
continents and styles. Can there be a better time therefore to take stock,
pausing to reflect on this gargantuan colossus of guitar, to consider the
magnitude of his deep and profound impact?
Of
course Baro was right, technique is only part of the whole story. Django not
only developed formidable technical prowess and unrivalled confidence but was
also blessed with a profound expressive insight, moving us with pearl-like
passages of heart rending delicacy one minute and stirring us with thunderous
chunks of unleashed power and attack the next. His unsurpassed technical
repertoire became a refined language, employed for expansive artistic
expression. As did the greatest literary genius in history, William Shakespeare,
in his own way Django too invented a whole new vocabulary, his own musical
syllables to form new words; a syntax for strings. It was a language to channel
time-transcending ideas and universal truths. Indeed, the danger is that in
assimilating Django’s style, we can at great musical cost, focus obsessively on
technique and end up missing the point entirely. Dazzling speed and accelerated
arpeggios, often seen as the trademark of the genre, are all well and good,
wonderful as flurries and just the ticket when playing to the gallery, but
devoid of meaning and the potential to engage the listener when played in a
continuous stream. Antiseptic, repetitious and meaningless musically, an
over-the-top pyrotechnics display! 
The
more we listen to Django, the more adept we become at detecting the nuances in
the development of his art, from the exuberance of the 1930s-Lady be good,
Dinah, the sheer adventure, joy and attack, into the more mature acoustic
period of the 1940s. Those Abbey Road engineers captured some of the finest
acoustic recordings of Django’s ‘mature’ acoustic style. Coquette,
Embraceable you and Nuages for example, are parables of acoustic
brilliance. The weight, force and precision of that right hand for up tempo
attack, the unique quivering Django vibrato, heard on both ballads and swing,
executed with such bewildering consistency. The power of his Selmer’s singing
tones rarely so vividly captured! This was Django at his most sophisticated,
melodic best acoustically - a musician at his most confident, aware of his own
virtuosity and powers, eloquent, articulate and at ease in his own language. A
tongue we all wish to master and speak with that same fluency. Equally at home
playing an improvised solo piece, in duo, quartet or quintet form, band or
orchestra, Django was the ultimate guitar hero.
Once
he had sorted his Stimer sound system, Django was developing that 1950’s
subtlety and sparse sophistication heard in Blues for Ike, Night and Day
and Nuages for example, where he revisits and reinterprets a largely
earlier catalogue to intriguing levels. Nuages is revisited with such
profoundly understated power and ethereal pathos. We were entering another
realm, uncharted waters and can only surmise where he was leading us. We would
have followed willingly! Perhaps premonition imbued these tracks.
