Great Romani artists – Django Reinhardt

Although I belonged to my school’s jazz club and my town’s jazz club, I don’t think anyone ever introduced me to the music of Django Reinhardt.  I wonder how many other music lovers are in the same position?  For the sake of any poor souls with a similarly deficient education, here are the main facts about his life.

Django was born in 1910 at Liberchies in Belgium where a jazz festival now takes place in May every year in his honour. 

As a “Minouche” (Romani or Sinti Gypsy) his early life was nomadic, but his family spent much time near Paris, and he is often referred to as being a French Gypsy. His name, Django, means “I awake” in the Romani language.

Django played banjo, violin and guitar-banjo from an early age, and by the time he was 13, was able to earn his living as a musician.  It could have been a great tragedy for music that he was badly injured in an accidental fire in his caravan (“roulotte” (French) or “verdine” (Romani) )when he was 18.  His leg was so badly damaged that amputation was proposed, but Django refused to accept the operation, and painfully learned to walk again.  Even more challenging was the loss of the use of the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. By the age of 19, however, he had switched his musical allegiance to the guitar, and begun to develop a unique method and style of playing that became known as “hot jazz guitar”. A recording featuring “The Sheik of Araby”, “Limehouse Blues” and“After You’ve Gone” illustrates his extraordinary virtuosity. He was widely considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Despite being in Vichy France during World War 2, Django survived the holocaust, possibly because of covert admirers of jazz among the occupying Nazis.

In 1946, he toured America, and was rapturously received. When he returned to Europe, his personal appearances could be somewhat erratic, but his output of records was prolific – between 750 and 1,000 sides in his lifetime, of which the last album, “Djangology” was only released after his death. He died of a brain haemorrhage at Fontainebleau in 1953.

The untitled melody in this youtube clip is a lovely testimony to his versatility as a guitarist.