In your first paragraph, you state Django was a composer. But he could not read music. In your second paragraph, you say that if you can’t read, then all you can do is mimic what you’ve previously heard. Both of these things cannot simultaneously be true.

There are lots of people in various Roma or Sinti (broadly referred to as ‘gypsy’) families who play music to a very high level, who can improvise freely, who can compose, and who can certainly play in the style of Django, without being able to read a note. The music’s been handed down as part of their tradition.

To say that they are not ‘musicians’ because you have decided on your own private definition of ‘musician’ which includes being able to read standard notation, is quite an eccentric stance to take.

All cultures produced music way before they produced a system for writing it down. Even today, I don’t think Indian classical music, for instance, is written down – it’s mostly improvised. Is there really ‘no way on Earth’ that Ravi Shankar couldn’t be described as a musician? ‘

The idea that Django, Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Tommy Emmanuel etc, (not to mention all the blind non readers like Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Tcha Limberger etc) are not really musicians – quite aside from the legion of folk musicians that we’re all familiar with – does not work for me. It seems obvious to me that they are.

The musicians I like, I like because of their ability to play, not their ability to read. There are countless folk musicians who fit this bill. Reading may be a useful skill, but it’s certainly not necessary to be a reader to be a musician.