D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music

Subject: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Bluesman James
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 08:38 AM

Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday. I have been kicking this around for decades. In 1971, I was a frustrated left handed guitarist from Brooklyn, spending time around the West Village through the Folklore Center (upstairs from the Waverly Theater -now long gone) to Music Inn (still there beleive it or not they must own the building)listening playing trying to learn everything that I encountered. I remember hearing about this "gypsy guy" who was missing two fingers from a caravan fire who played like the devil Devil - I thought that was Robert Johnson's turf., Hey I wasn't even 17 yet, what did I know. I was able to get a copy of "Djangology" with Stephan Grapelli and I was blown away with "Minor Swing", "Brick-top"- another thread about that song, Honeysuckle Rose, I can go on and on. At the time this music was too assertoric   for the crowd I know or too complicated to play. It didn't fit the categories. If you played Blues you played blues. If you played Bluegrass, you Plyed bluegrass. If you played, Crosby Stills, and Nash,you played CSN. The parameters were very tight. back then.
Now in 2010 there are gypsy jazz festivals and D'jango web site by the score. Woody Allen made a film about even using the term "that gypsy guy"
What is even more remarkable the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, a blues grass ensemble did "Minor Swing" as an encore. So is D:jango and Gypsy Jazz folk music now? Nugges anyone/

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 08:43 AM

I'm not sure what it is! Jazz guitar great Barney Kessell once said that he didn't consider Django to be playing jazz!
Anyway, whatever it is, it's fantastic!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 09:12 AM

the Roma are experts at adopting musical styles, then taking them farther, creating hybrid sounds. Django was criticized early on that he wasn't really playing jazz. I suppose because it was something new that the 'purists' hadn't heard. It was jazzy enough for Benny Goodman!
His legacy is enormous, and he's helped provide careers for many 'Gypsies and non-gypsies alike. Whether it's folk or not, well maybe the folk police will determine that...
meanwhile Mr Reinhardt kicked some serious ass...

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 11:23 AM

Was the Buddha a Hindoo? Was Jesus a Jew?

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 12:07 PM

I would say that Django took some popular melodies from his era and improvised around them - i.e. played them as jazz - in a unique style that was drawn from his own musical background. His own compositions, also in a style from his background, were played in a similar way.

I wouldn't personally call (for example) "Sweet Georgia Brown" as played by Django 'folk music'. To be pedantic, I think it's typical of the jazz from the 30s through to the late 40s, played in a way which was all his own and unique at the time. That way has now been assimilated into gypsy culture and the Django style has, in a sense, come full circle.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GutBucketeer
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 01:15 PM

Why does it matter?

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 02:51 PM

Come on, Gutbucketeer. Wars have been fought over less important questions.
Minor Swing is a popular tune with the Bluegrassers I sometimes jam with, and it certainly lends itself to banjo, fiddle, and mandolin. Is it a fit topic for discussion on the Mudcat? I sure think it is!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 04:12 PM

Why does the question arise?
Excellent improvisor, inventive, both as group player and in incorporated solo work, master of the instrument; certainly not what is meant by folk.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 04:30 PM

As a recent convert to gypsy jazz music, (I've just bought a cheap Macceferri to noodle around on) I'd say he was and it is folk music of a kind. In it's broadest sense of course. Why does the question arise at all indeed? he played what he played and was damned good at it. Why does the folk world have to be so pedantic?

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 05:25 PM

I suppose the dufference is Bruce that you've joined up Bruce.

If you pick up a guitar, open your ears, use the sensibility that God gave you - it screams folk music at you.

The way he played scales to rhythms - strange rhythms gotten from flamenco or maybe Basque music rather than allowing every notes its full value. Its independence from notation. The way he rewrote the technique books to bypass and even use his disability. this wasn't learned from textbooks, or just made up on the spot - it came from a living gypsy tradition.

Of course some dopey self important committee won't recognise folk music. Of course he didn't play Morris tunes - though he was undoubtedly closer to Moorish traditions than anything in England, of course English journalists and BBC braindead dj's wouldn't recognise it as folk music.

But yes, Django was a real folk. he belongs on our side of the barricades - not sure about the 1954 committee for excluding folk musicians from folk music.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 05:53 PM

If folk music is the music of the folk and Django was a folk...

For those who love Djangojazz, google Troy Chapman. He is highly regarded as a guitarist in the NW (USA) and his group, Billet Deux, plays Djangojazz. He also plays with Pearl Django.   

He is my number 1 son so you can tell me what you think, or tell him! Enjoy!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 08:40 PM

The distinction does matter, because there is such a thing as gypsy folk music, and it isn't the sort of professionalized music Django was playing for non-Gypsy audiences. Gypsy folk music is heterogeneous and for the most part unrecorded and unknown to the non-Gypsy world. It also tends not to go in for the sort of soloistic flash that the gorgios want Gypsy performers to put on for them.

The Hungarian CD set "Gypsies of Csenyete" is one of the few recordings of it you can buy, from anywhere; and the Hungarian group "Kalyi Jag" has tried turning it into public performance music, but outside Hungary I can't think of anything comparable. Dragging out horse cliches about Django simply helps bury this music even deeper in obscurity.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 08:59 PM

Although born into a gypsy family, and, at first trained largely by professionally performing gypsy musicians, Reinhardt was quick to explore and use several traditions in his music. His associates became the jazz musicians of France and America, and the classically trained violinist Stephane Grappelli, with whom he founded the Quintette du Hot Club, originally including one of Django's brothers.
His recordings of American Jazz standards in European form with the group, and his own inventive compositions, brought him a wide audience.

He can be called a folk musician only to the extent that he sometimes incorporated melodies of folk type, much as Bach (in his secular cantatas) and other musicians have done throughout time. He experimented with symphonic arrangements, most notably in "Manoir de Mes Rives."

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 09:05 PM

Django, not D'Jango. No apostrophe. Not French.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Dec 10 - 10:20 PM

Jack you write as though gypsy music were just one homogenous mass. the gypsy influence of which I speak is the most famous - namely flamenco - where guitarists learn to play notes in different rhythms - be they playing a soleares or whatever.

this mixture fluidity and lyricism of solo is very observable - particularly in the stuff Django did on acoustic guitar. So very different in feeling from a jazz player like joe Pass or Tal Farlow - even playing the same Gershwin tunes.

i feel like I've been hearing this stuff years. josh White was no longer a blues singer when he played in New York night clubs.

Why is it so necessary to attack musicians who take the bag of tricks their culture has gifted them with and explore the global village - as no longer being of that or any tradtion.

Its like folk music is the bailliewick run by some bloody tyrant of wicked baron and what he says goes.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 03:35 AM

Wher does Basque and Moorish fit into this? Wasn't he Belgian and raised near Paris? Hardly Flamenco territory. We too often confuse culture and ethnicity, Gipsy music isn't monolithic but varies over distance reflecting the music of the 'host' community.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 04:08 AM

The main thing that distinguishes Django from another jazz guitarist like Joe Pass or Tal Farlow is that he brought a different melodic and harmonic aesthetic to his improvisation - an aesthetic that came from his own musical background, rather than the more conventional American one.

His work with Grappelli is pure jazz - as is the duetting of Eddie Lang with Joe Venuti (both of Italian backgrounds), or the duetting of Johnny Van Derrick with Dizley. And others. The guitar/violin combination is one of the staples of jazz.

I repeat what I said earlier: Django brought a Belgian gypsy feel to the jazz that he played - whatever that feel was - and his style of jazz then became incorporated into the more modern "manouche" music we hear today. I don't know of any other gypsy-born jazz guitarists before Django (correct me if I'm wrong), and in that sense, he was unique.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 04:15 AM

Surely the whole point of being a gypsy is that they got around a bit and the flamenco spirit is one that represents a profusion of different elements. You can hear Moorish elements in flamenco(why wouldn't you, the Moors were in Andalucia for hundreds of years), you can certainly hear flamenco in the Basque folk music of northern Spain.

Perhaps too much confusion of culture and ethnicity for you. I doubt if your illustrious namesake would agree.

If anybody has such doctrinaire views of folk music that they can't hear by turns the exuberance and sadness of gypsy folk music in Django's work, I feel sort of sorry for them.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 04:34 AM

There seems to be some confusion between the feeling that Django brought into his music and the music that he actually played. Jazz musicians - like everyone else - came from a wide variety of backgrounds and had a wide variety of influences in the jazz that they played.

Try comparing Django's solo guitar "Improvisation No. 6" with Bix Beiderbecke's solo piano pieces like "In A Mist" or "Candles". In both cases the influences of their early musical life can be heard - the gypsy influence behind Django's chord progressions and improvisations on them - and the influence of Debussy-like harmonies on Bix.

Different strokes but, if you look at the recorded repertoire of both musicians, they're both firmly in a jazz tradition. And what's so wrong about that? What does it matter? Enjoy!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 04:49 AM

And do you also subscribe to the term Celtic Music, that there is a similarity in the music of the Celtic Fringe because of a Celtic spirit imparted by the genes. Or is the similarity just due to the fact that the Celtic countries are neighbouring.

I don't fail to see joy,sadness and exuburance in Reinhardt's music but I don't put it down to his ancestry but to his culture (that is apart from his particular genius). His musical influences were mostly from the people around him and not from 600 miles away. As for getting about about a bit I suspect international travel wasn't that common in the early 20th century.

BTW, doctrinaire means "Seeking to impose a doctrine in all circumstances without regard to practical considerations". Practical considerations...It doesn't mean having a different point of view to you.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: breezy
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:09 AM

Probably not.

But

When a song appears that tells of Django's life , that could be a considered as a 'folk' song because its relating - in this instance - a true story.

The song is well researched and written by by a 'jazz/folk' artiste

Therefore if you have the opportunity take a listen to Chris Flegg's biographical 'Spirit of Django' as featured on an album he released this year.

happy new year

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:20 AM

I've not listened to Django Reinhardt since my late teens early 20s
30 odd years ago..

.. part of the process of my youthful keen enthusiastic self education to play guitar..

Django's been gone over half a century, and whatever his brilliance inspired for the good,
is now tempered by a whole lot of dull music college tutored 'world gypsy jazz'
which is frankly very bloated and very very boring..

But then a whole lot of very clever new age instrumental 'celtic folk' music is as equally crap to listen to..

I'm going to find some Django to listen to in the new year..

going back to source.. thanks for the reminder, looking forward to listening again..

maybe he's folk, maybe not..

It's not Django's fault he's cited as an important influence
by so many boring modern easy listening HI-FI CD label contemporary jazz folk fusion recording guitarists..


inoffensive background music for trendy cafes & clothes shops..

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:25 AM

This thread is an example of a very odd phenomenon which appears to be endemic to the Folk Music genre. Similar examples appear on Mudcat with monotonous regularity:

A folk fan starts a thread declaring that, besides folk, they enjoy other musical genres as well (so far, so uncontroversial).

The folk fan then 'asks' other Mudcat users if they agree that one of the other admired musical genres (genre X) is Folk Music too (I put the 'asks' within quotes because it usually transpires that the folk fan has already decided that genre X is Folk Music)?

A discussion then results in which at least one contributor accuses anyone who doesn't agree with the proposition of being "doctrinaire", purist or, that old standby, a 'Folk Policeman'.

What is really going on here? Why are some folk fans so insecure that they need (a) to have other musical genres, that they happen to like, 'sanctified' with the label 'Folk' and (b)to have their various theories confirmed by other folk fans?

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Callingbird
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:40 AM

The answer to your question Bluesman is 'No'.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: C-flat
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:54 AM

Django's been gone over half a century, and whatever his brilliance inspired for the good,
is now tempered by a whole lot of dull music college tutored 'world gypsy jazz'
which is frankly very bloated and very very boring..

I couldn't agree more.
I've actually been on courses to study gypsy jazz and quickly realised that nobody can teach you to play with the passion and attack of Django. He didn't have all that theory cluttering his thinking, just played as he felt it.
By approaching jazz in the mind-set of a flamenco player I think it's possible to get a sense of the style, the rest is sweat and tears, and if you're born gifted....
The Rosenberg Trio are well worth a listen to. A little clinical but very, very good.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 07:04 AM

em>Jack you write as though gypsy music were just one homogenous mass

I specifically said it wasn't. And isn't even in a single location - Gypsies are distinguished by lineage and occupational groupings which often differ in musical culture. You're writing as if all the folk music of the Gypsies can be represented by a single individual, and it doesn't get much more homogenizing than that.


the gypsy influence of which I speak is the most famous - namely flamenco - where guitarists learn to play notes in different rhythms - be they playing a soleares or whatever.

Much of the flamenco idiom is Arabic. Carried on by Gypsies (the professional musician class among them, anyway) but not originated by them - much the same process as elsewhere in western Asia with different raw material.


this mixture fluidity and lyricism of solo is very observable

That isn't characteristic of all Gypsy folk music - it tends just as much to unlyrical ritualistic stomping. But the lyrical-virtuosic style is what the gorgios want, so the pros have learned to provide it.


Why is it so necessary to attack musicians who take the bag of tricks their culture has gifted them with and explore the global village - as no longer being of that or any tradtion.

A distinction is not an attack. The point is that Django's music does fit into a tradition, but it isn't a folk one. It comes out of the music of the Gypsy professional musician class, which adapted itself to whatever music the surrounding culture already had and wanted to have played for them. Usually the Gypsies could do it better than the locals, simply because they were professional about it (and the locals might have taboos that prevented them getting very good at their own music, which occurred in both Christian and Muslim societies). Django did not play Gypsy folk music. The Gypsy professional musician class never did, anywhere; they specifically did NOT use their own culture's bag of tricks. A Gypsy violinist in Vienna would have been insane to put down his fiddle and start doing the mouth or tin-jug percussion you'd hear in an encampment of Gypsy traders and craftsmen. The Viennese wouldn't have wanted to hear it.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 07:13 AM

Once again C-Flat. Your a foot soldier. You've picked up the guitar and had a look what's involved. I suspect once you do that, it becomes clearer = the folk connection that is.

Django spent plenty of time in the south of France = not to far from the Spanish border and his gypsy encampments would have hosted gypsies from all over the continent. So he would have met lots of varied musicians as a child.

Strangely enough I would have categorised Bix as a folk musician too. I think if you read JP Lion's biography and sections about Bix's technique - you'd come to the conclusion there was some folk process involved.

As for the celtic thing - well yes I think theres connections. Dublin was a viking town. Have a look at Stuart Gilbert's book on Joyce's Ulysses. Gilbert explains the connections with celtic/Irish/Viking culture better than I can.

And shimrod. yes it does matter. I don't want to sanctify music with the label folk, but I'd like to blow out of the water the proposition that English people don't understand their own folk music, and that only aficianados have a stake in 'real' folk music.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 08:18 AM

"As a recent convert to gypsy jazz music, (I've just bought a cheap Macceferri to noodle around on)..." [Guest: Bruce Michael Baillie - above]

Bruce, if you've just bought a CHEAP Maccaferri you are a very lucky chap! Look after it well (and don't forget to insure it). Very few of the original Selmer/Maccaferri guitars were mad. They rarely come on the market and usually sell for many thousands of dollars, pounds or euros.

However I suspect that what you have is a modern copy of Django's guitar. These can be pretty costly too - but some of the cheaper mass-produced ones also produce a nice noise. If yours is one of those, I hope you enjoy it.

As for the question of what category Django's music belongs in - why not just label it "sui generis" and get on with learning the tunes? That's a hard enough job in itself, and arguing about genres uses up precious practic time.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 09:59 AM

About thirty years ago inthe old Music Ground Shop in Doncaster I was offered a plastic Macaferri. I thought it was horrible, so I didn't buy it. As you say there are some very nice new ones.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 11:59 AM

so apparently Django Reinhardt started exploring the ELECTRIC guitar
and posibly that's what he played on his very last recordings..

now that's very interesting to me..


Hints please, what CD's to look for for any of these final electric sessions ???..

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: C-flat
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 12:08 PM

Here you go!

Although I don't believe this is Django anywhere near his best.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: fat B****rd
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 12:12 PM

'ello 'erbert
Try "Django Reinhardt -The Electric Years"*, available on Amazon, quite cheaply.
*Snappy title !!

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 12:30 PM

Perhaps if the band performed at a folk festival such as Old Songs, but Falcon Ridge has become one of those big tent, all-encompassing "folk" festivals.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Leadfingers
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 12:40 PM

I have read 'Learned Men' who say that Jazz is American Folk Music !

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 01:23 PM

Why are some folk fans so insecure that they need (a) to have other musical genres, that they happen to like, 'sanctified' with the label 'Folk' and (b)to have their various theories confirmed by other folk fans?

Au contraire, Monsieur Shimster. I think it's more a matter of genuine bewilderment on the part of people who a) love the music regardless and b) are genuinely baffled as to what the label 'Folk' actually means. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a musical genre? Or is it (as the 1954 Definition insists it is) a philosophical formulae that might be bestowed (from on high) on any pre-existing music by way of enabling the sort psuedo-academic taxonomy (i.e hobbyist pedantry) that has typified the Folk Revival since its inception?

Like the existence of God, the existence of Folk is a matter of personal faith; these days I tend to believe in neither. That said, I do work well within certain musical traditions which many think of as being Folk (old time fiddle, Sea Shanties, Child, Broadside & Bothy Ballads, English Old Popular Song, etc.) and other music genres which many wouldn't (free improvisation, free jazz, electronica, dark metal, hip-hop, etc.) which are just as 1954 as the other stuff in terms of their being Traditional, but maybe aren't so easy to mythologise in terms of their being Folk.

Love Django by the way.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 01:55 PM

Hmmm! Let's try again.

You see I think that posts like this are not really saying, "I'm not sure if D'jango Rheinhardt was a folk musician or not: discuss". What they're really saying is, "I've already made my mind up that D'jango Rheinhardt was a folk musician because (a) I desperately want someone to agree with this 'great thought'; (b) I'm looking for an opportunity to slag off 'purists; (c) I'm deliberately trying to stir up controversy and go over that old 'what is Folk' ground for the umpty umpteenth time.

Why not just say, "I think that D'jango Rheinhardt was a folk musician" and leave it at that?

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 02:08 PM

It's like Christians seeing God in everything and wanting to share that with others. Atheists might dig the same stuff (sunsets, stars, infinity, trees, etc.) but they don't see God in it. So if a Folky sees Folk in Django they'll want to put that to the Fellowship, which seems natural to me, especially on a forum like Mudcat. I don't think there's any bad intemntion here.

I dig Django muchly, but I don't see Folk (or God) in his music. Neither do I see it in Harry Cox, who I also dig muchly.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 02:54 PM

Well actually Bluesman James hasn't said a dickie bird for a while. So theres no guessing his original intentions.

Lets leave it if Django had come to me and said, lets start a folk group, but I don't want to change my style. And then Bix Beiderbecke did the same.

Personally I'd stretch the meaning of folk to include them. And this leads me to believe - they were a bit folky in the first place.

That'd be some version of The Wild Rover.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:20 PM

Thanks to all for this lively discussion. There were some excellent points and I am grateful there were no personal attacks (as I have witnessed on other discussion groups)
Interesting: I posted another thread about the origins of the song Hooka Tooka//Green Rocky Road where I anticipated much involvement and there were only three posts. You never can tell what excites people

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 05:58 PM

If the term "folk" has any meaning at all, I would think that the wonderful music of Django is NOT folk.

It IS loose and improvisational, as someone noted above as justication FOR the "folk" label, but is that really a valid criterion? If so, jazz of all kinds ~ including the most abstract post-modern forms that folk-purist types seem to absolutely abhor ~ would fit under the definition of "folk."

My own very ideosyncratic definition of "folk music" is "music that is familiar to the just-plain folks of a given community." To me, then, favorite pop tunes (e.g., "oldies") qualify as "folk music" of the worldwide musical culture that shares access to and interest in the internet. Whatever you can sing along with, in other words.

Sing-along-ability is NOT a characteristic of Django's brilliant instrumental work, no moreso than that of, say, John Coltrane or Philip Glass. To me, music intended for performance rather than primarily for participation is not really "folk."

Now, someone else's definition of "folk" might well encompass performance art, as long as the music being performed duplicates some old-time musical canon that once belonged to some community of villagers or fishermen, etc., who were able to sing and play that music together. To me, that kind of thing may evoke folk music, or may once have been folk music, but now it ain't; it's art music.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 07:01 PM

This is some of the gypsy folk I was talking about:

Kalyi Jag on YouTube

The "rolling" of the title is the choral ostinato accompaniment that starts around 1:00. It's found sporadically in Gypsy folk music over a very wide area, right across to Pakistan. Nothing remotely like it in any of the professionals' genres; it's an essentially participatory idiom that can only arise in a setting where there are no pure spectators. Once you get the rhythm, you grunt along with it.

They have quite a few YouTubes up. The guitar is a relatively recent addition - it didn't get into this music until after Django's death, and it isn't doing much that you couldn't do by thumping the neck of a large bottle. The culture they got the guitar from was rural Hungary and Romania, where guitars mostly had three strings removed so they could function as a sort of string drum with at most two chords. In turn, the adoption of the guitar by Hungarian and Romanian peasants only dates from Django's lifetime - he took it in the direction of Western salon music and they took it back to the Middle Ages. He could not have been further removed from this Gypsy folk tradition if he'd tried (and he probably did try).

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 09:28 PM

The 'gypsy music' most people know is professionally played music of Austria-Hungary-Bohemia. It is European-based with elements developed by the gypsy musicians that entertained in the cafes and elsewhere, but has little of gypsy music (see Jack Campin, above).

Similarly, 'flamenco' was Andalucian, with of course Moorish and Sephardic Jewish contributions from their long dominance in the Andalucian area until they were kicked out or forced to convert by Isabella and Ferdinand at the end of the 1400s. It has many variations, one in the verdiales of Murcia (perhaps the source of the castanets often used by gypsies).

Gypsies moved into Spain not long before this time; gypsy professionals developed much of what we call gypsy flamenco in the 19th century, contributing to flamenco dance, and less so to the music; accompanied with the loud emotionalism of this 'club' or cafe excess that most people mistakenly regard as genuine. But it is entertaining while the wine flows and it does 'sell'.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 09:44 PM

I think you're very judgemental, dismissive, not to say plain high handed and wrong when it comes to Gypsy Flamenco.

Whilst there are many fine professional flamenco musicians in Spain - it is a genuine folk art - practiced extensively and to a very high standard by many people just for the plain love of the music, the singing and the dance. Not to sell anything.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 10:33 PM

True Spanish Flamenco is not gypsy in origin.
It is a folk art, as you say extensively practiced by Andalucians, and owes little to gypsy folk music.
There are good examples of the flamenco-verdiales of Murcia on youtube, and probably good Andalusian but I don't have time to sort through all the "gypsy" candy.
A fine group from Murcia was included as a photoblog, surprisingly on MSNBC. Scroll down to the youtube excerpt:
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/28/5726080-spanish-villagers-perform-traditional-flamenco-music-in-their-local-festival

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 04:01 AM

It is a genuine folk art

Only if you want it to be. In reality it's just another traditional musical / dance genre along with all the others. Otherwise it's no more (or less) a folk art than Hip-Hop, Acid House, Ballroom Dancing or Northern Soul.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 04:05 AM

'Spanish Flamenco is not gypsy in origin.'


In the 1970's I used to winter in Spain after the strenuous Christmas season playing gigs in working men's clubs. Quite a few of the gypsies I knew at that point in my life would have been enraged at that suggestion.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 06:49 AM

Being enraged is not much of an argument (for a similar dose of rage, try pointing out to an Irish bigot that a lot of familiar Irish trad tunes have their origins in England). Fortunately the Arabic component of flamenco is now seen as a selling point, so there's less resistance to the historical facts than there used to be.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 12:58 PM

Yesterday's GUEST (28 Dec 10 - 05:58 PM) was me. Sorry, forgot to log in.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Alan whittle
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 02:14 PM

Ireland and England are very close. I have relations that have sung on both sides of the Irish Sea - not at the same time, you understand. come to think of it, I have. How would you know whether I was singing an Irish or an English song. particularly - if I'd made it up.

Subject: RE: D'jango and Gypsy Jazz, Is it folk music
From: GUEST,Jayto
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 08:39 PM

Hello my name is Jayto and I love Django. lol