Gypsy Jazz Music

Gypsy Jazz Music

 We had the pleasure this past weekend of listening to Swing de Paris at Hal and Mal's Friday night.  It was a delightful evening.  When Swing de Paris performs, ornamental notes bounce off strings, creating sounds to carry you off in a gypsy caravan. Comprised of Tim Avalon, David Keary, Richard Pharr and Allison Jenkins (also a member of the bands Wooden Finger and Saint Brigid's), Swing de Paris follows the example of famed jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt.

The band's music, often called "gypsy jazz," is comprised of limited percussion with a focus on strings—a singing violin and melodic guitar. Jenkins' ethereal voice lends itself well to French, German and Italian lyrics, which accompany upbeat, lively melodies. We felt like dancing along to the jingling guitars and felt spirited away to a decades-old jazz club.

Swing de Paris fills a void left by the swarms of indie-rock bands, gifting Jackson with a palette of Cole Porter, George Gershwin and jazz d'jango. The band is currently writing an album of all original jazz songs, but until that CD is available, see them live and enjoy a little "Summertime" at Hal & Mal's or Fenian's.

Jean "Django" Reinhardt  (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953) was a Belgian guitarist and composer.

Reinhardt is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time and is the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the idiom. Using only the index and middle fingers of his left hand on his solos (his third and fourth fingers were paralyzed after an injury in a fire), Reinhardt invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called 'hot' jazz guitar) that has since become a living musical tradition within French Gypsy culture. With violinist Stephane Grappelli , he co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz."  Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing", "Daphne", "Belleville", "Djangology", "Swing '42", and "Nuages".

  The Hot Club of France was a kind of jazz appreciation society based in Paris in the 1930s and Django Reinhardt, perhaps the greatest jazz guitarist of all time, and his quintet (featuring Stephane Grappelli on violin) swiftly became its main attraction. In an era when it was commonly believed that in order to play jazz you had to be African American and from somewhere like New Orleans, Reinhardt managed to single-handedly debunk this myth, and in the process become the first international European jazz star.

Although Reinhardt played in the jazz idiom, he did not try to mimic his American counterparts, but developed his own distinct style of playing (on an instrument that was not even an accepted jazz solo instrument at the time and with two crippled fingers on his left hand)!

His pre-war recordings for HMV and Swing became wildly popular, selling to audiences eager to hear what this new ‘European jazz’ was all about. These recordings (1940) chronicle a time when Paris was the center of the world, and the legendary night clubs of Montmarte, Pigalle and along the Champs-Élysées were filled with jazz bands, but with the onset of WWII, all this changed and gypsies like Django Reinhardt were systematically being rounded up and sent to the death camps.

During this time Reinhardt found himself literally having to play and record in order to stay alive. As long as he was a star, he was safe. Amazingly, Reinhardt still managed to compose and record some of his best material during this dark era, and songs like “Oriental Shuffle,” “Mystery Pacific,” “Bricktop,” “Minor Swing” and “Nuages” still represent some of his best work.

Django Reinhardt was perhaps the greatest guitarist to ever live. A Gypsy who made his jazz guitar speak with a human voice, he was dashing, charismatic, childish . . . and doomed to die young after creating a legacy of Gypsy Jazz that remains vibrant today.

Gypsy Jazz is a music both joyous and sad, timeless and modern. It was born from a marriage of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet with the anguished sound of Romany violin and the fire of flamenco guitar. Created amidst the glamour of Jazz Age Paris and reaching a peak during the horrors of World War II, Gypsy Jazz gave a voice to a dispossessed people. Today, Gypsy Jazz is more popular than ever. It has a legacy as strong as the Cuban sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club, the blues of B. B. King, or the R&B of Ray Charles.

 

Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz by Michael Dregni is a stylish collection of more than two hundred illustrations telling Django’s story and the history of Gypsy jazz. Running through the Paris Jazz Age of the 1920s to the current worldwide renaissance of Gypsy jazz bands (including Django’s grandsons, who are playing today), the images include rare archival photographs, modern images, posters, programs, tickets, guitars, memorabilia, paintings, and more.

 Dregni is a writer for Vintage Guitar magazine; his work has also appeared in Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Player, and The Utne Reader, among other publications. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  

Stéphane Grappelli ( 6 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his 80s.

For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, Grappelly, reverting to "Grappelli" in 1969. The latter, Italian, spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist – even on reissues of his early work. Stefan Grappelli is a significant alternative rendering of his name on later recordings.

To listen to some Gypsy Jazz, go to 

Gypsy Jazz on JAZZRADIO.com

‎

 http://www.jazzradio.com/gypsyjazz

I think one of my favorites that Swing de Paris performed was "I Love Paris in the Springtime."  

Every time I look down on this timeless town
Whether blue or gray be her skies
Whether loud be her cheers or whether soft be her tears
More and more do I realize

That I love Paris in the spring time
I love Paris in the fall
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I love Paris every moment
Every moment of the year
I love Paris, why oh, why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near

 

I love Paris in the spring time
I love Paris in the fall
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I love Paris every moment
Every moment of the year
I love Paris, why oh, why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near

Songwriter
COLE PORTER

I hope you will get a chance to hear Swing de Paris the next time they perform in Jackson.  There's a smile on my face and a song in my heart every time I think of the music!