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Posts Tagged ‘Django Reinhardt’

Paris Blues

Posted in Influences, Music, tagged Django Reinhardt on August 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wednesday morning in the summer. Starting some new work, looking forward to trying some new things and psuhing some other things a bit further. Trying to focus on work and block out the debacle of our current political system, hoping that we somehow emerge from the deep, dark tunnel in which we now find ourselves. Just writing that sentence gets me agitated. Who needs that on a quiet August morning?

Seems like a good time to hear a little Django Reinhardt, the late great Gypsy guitarist whose music I’ve featured hear a few times. There’s something in his distinctive playing that is both sad and happy, with a sort of weariness in even its most joyful passages. Don’t know if that makes sense . Guess it doesn’t matter. His playing simply soothes.

Just give a listen to his Paris Blues and take it easy on this August day wherever you may be.

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A Little Django

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged Django Reinhardt, Selmer on August 22, 2010| 4 Comments »

It’s very early Sunday morning and there’s the sound of rain falling outside the windows of the studio. Still dark and the rain provides a steady rhythm section of sound as it rolls off the leaves of the trees and the roof. Very organic sound that makes me think of music.

I’ve come across a neat video from 1939 featuring Django Reinhardt along with his Quintette du Hot Club de France, featuring violinist Stephane Grappelli. It’s sort of a very early music video. It’s a great chance to see Django’s two-finger playing which has been a huge inspiration to generations of guitarists. It’s also a great chance to see the unique Selmer guitars used by the band’s members, which had the very distinctive oval and D-shaped soundholes. Django’s influence can be seen in the guitar industry today as luthiers around the world still try to reproduce the Selmers that Django made famous but ceased to be made after the early 1950’s. The guitar shown here is a Selmer replicant from Manouche and is as beautiful a piece of craftmanship as you’ll see.

Anyway, here is the acoustic sounds of Django and the Hot Club. Organic sounds for an organic morning…

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September Song/ Django

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged Django Reinhardt, Frank Sinatra, Kurt Weill, Willie Nelson on September 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Walking down to grab the paper this morning and everything was shrouded in fog. It was very early, before 6, and the morning light was still trying to gather, giving the scene a haunting, ghostly appearance. Chill in the air.

September.

It really made me think of one of my favorite songs, September Song, the beautiful old Kurt Weill song that has been performed by hundreds of artists over the last seventy years, from Sinatra to Willie Nelson, who does a lovely, delicate version. On this cool, misty morning I am reminded of one of my favorite versions, that being the one from Django Reinhardt, the jazz guitarist from the middle of the last century whose distinctive gypsy-tinged plucking, the result of basically playing with only two fingers on his left hand as a result of an injury received in a fire in his youth, has influenced artists long after he passed away.

Here’s Django’s September Song. Hope you’ll enjoy…