What is Gypsy Jazz?
- It started out in Paris in 1934, with Django Reinhardt (guitar) and Stéphane Grappelli (violin), Roger Chaput and Django’s brother Joseph on guitars and bassist/organiser Louis Vola.
- The group was called the Quintette of the Hot Club of France and became the world’s foremost non-wind, non-drums band: Europe’s main contribution to the American jazz style.
- The style was called hot club jazz all the way into the 1980s. After the revival worldwide, which reached America in the late 1990s, the name changed to gypsy jazz, as Django was a gypsy and the top contemporary players are gypsies, too.
- Gypsy jazz has hardly any musical gypsy elements. It is swing jazz played on string instruments. Django and Stéphane were trying to imitate the American jazz of Louis Armstrong, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. A typical French touch is Django’s addition of Valse Musette, a Parisian accordion style.
- The repertoire consists mainly of American swing standards from the 1920s and 1930s, plus songs byDjango and Stéphane. Django’s ballads Nuages and Anouman are played outside the gypsy jazz world. His and Stéphane’s other songs never broke through into mainstream jazz circles.