An in-depth analysis of the music and life of a gypsy music legend

(Book). The music of Django Reinhardt is as important today as it has ever been. Blending jazz and gypsy influences, his exuberant solos and incisive rhythm playing have fascinated and tantalized guitarists for half a century. In this book, leading jazz writer Dave Gelly considers Django's life and recordings and explains exactly why he sounded the way he did. Meanwhile, guitarist and teacher Rod Fogg shows you how you can achieve that sound yourself, with the help of detailed transcriptions of six of Django's most celebrated and exciting numbers. Includes audio wth all six numbers accurately recorded from the transcriptions for you to follow along.

The solos of Django Reinhardt are an endless source of inspiration and amazement for any musician. In this exciting book, the author has compiled precise solo transcriptions (in notation only), as well as a thorough analysis of each. There is also a complete "how to" section that is like a book in itself. This book contains some of Django's best work. It covers a period of 17 years, from Django's first trio and quintet recordings to one of his last bop-influenced sessions, "Live at the Club St. Germain." Multiple versions of many solos are included to show Djangos' musical development over his long career. Studying the music of the master of Gypsy Jazz can help lay a solid foundation for your own sound and style.

(Guitar Play-Along). The Guitar Play-Along Series will help you play your favorite songs quickly and easily! Just follow the tab, listen to the audio to hear how the guitar should sound, and then play along using the separate backing tracks. The melody and lyrics are also included in case you want to sing, or to simply help you follow along. 8 songs: Brazil * Daphne * Djangology * Honeysuckle Rose * Minor Swing * Nuages * Souvenirs * Swing 42.

No European jazz musician has so enchanted the word as Django Reinhardt, the gypsy guitarist whose recording with Stephane Grappelly and the Hot Club of France have meant "The Thirties" to several generations of listeners, influencing musicians as far afield as Larry Coryell, Leon Redbone, Eddy Lang, and Charlie Christian. This is the only full-length study of Django ever published in English, an unforgettable portrait of a wild and independent figure who never learned to read or write (friends forged his autographs), exasperated those people who lived by schedules, gambled away a week's salary in a night, but who played the guitar like no one before or since. The distinguished French critic Charles Delaunay, who knows more about Django than anyone alive, here provides not only the familiar outline of a life--the childhood travels in gypsy caravans, the fire that left Django with a crippled hand, the legendary temper and generosity--but he also collected scores of anecdotes about the sensitivity and musical gifts that were the basis for Django's appearance as a character in Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles. Who else but Django could charm his way out of a jail sentence by serenading the police officer with his guitar? The comprehensive discography at the back of the book completes Delaunay's picture of this "misrepresented and fantastic creature, at once so captivating and so divorced from the contentions of his age."

Django Reinhardt was perhaps the greatest guitarist to ever live. A Gypsy who made his jazz guitar speak with a human voice, he was dashing, charismatic, childish . . . and doomed to die young after creating a legacy of Gypsy Jazz that remains vibrant today. Gypsy Jazz is a music both joyous and sad, timeless and modern. It was born from a marriage of Louis Armstrong s trumpet with the anguished sound of Romany violin and the fire of flamenco guitar. Created amidst the glamour of Jazz Age Paris and reaching a peak during the horrors of World War II, Gypsy Jazz gave a voice to a dispossessed people. Today, Gypsy Jazz is more popular than ever. It has a legacy as strong as the Cuban sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club, the blues of B. B. King, or the R&B of Ray Charles. "Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz" is a stylish collection of more than two hundred illustrations telling Django s story and the history of Gypsy jazz. Running through the Paris Jazz Age of the 1920s to the current worldwide renaissance of Gypsy jazz bands (including Django s grandsons, who are playing today), the images include rare archival photographs, modern images, posters, programs, tickets, guitars, memorabilia, paintings, and more. "

Dregni has penned the first major critical biography of Gypsy legend and guitar icon Django Reinhardt.

"The distinctive sound of the swing-driven guitar style of Django Reinhardt has become almost synonymous with a carefree, bohemian Frenchness to fans all over the world. However, we in the US refer to his music using a telling designation: Django is known here as the father of gypsy jazz. In France, the cultural significance of the musical style--called jazz manouche in reference to his origins in the Manouche subgroup of Romanies (known pejoratively as "Gypsies")--is fraught both for the Manouche and for the white French men and women eager to claim Django as a native son. In Django Generations, ethnomusicologist Siv B. Lie explores the complicated ways in which Django's legacy and jazz manouche express competing notions of what it means to be French. Though jazz manouche is overwhelmingly popular in France, Manouche people are more often treated as outsiders. However, some Manouche people turn to their musical heritage to gain acceptance in mainstream French society. Considering all of the characteristics and roles attributed to Django--as a world-renowned jazz musician, as an artistic pioneer, as a representative of French heritage, and as a Manouche--jazz manouche becomes a potent means for performers and listeners to articulate their relationships with French society, actual or hoped-for. Weaving together a history of jazz manouche and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the bars, festivals, family events, and cultural organizations where jazz manouche is performed and celebrated, Lie offers insight into how a musical genre can channel arguments about national and ethnoracial belonging. She argues that an uncomfortable cohabitation of Manouche identity and French identity lies at the heart of jazz manouche, which is what makes it so successful and powerful"--

For many, the story of jazz guitar begins with Charlie Christian. In 1939, at 23 years old, Charlie joined the Bennie Goodman Sextet, already one of the most famous jazz bands in the world. Over the next two years of his all-too-brief life Charlie redefined the role of jazz guitar, expanding it from its role in the rhythm section to that of lead instrument on par with the great horn players. Simultaneously, his late-night jam sessions alongside Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Kenny Clarke at Harlem's renowned Minton's jazz club led to a revolutionary new jazz called Bebop. To best understand Charlie Christian's approach to improvising, for each song this book provides multiple examples of his soloing. Comparing and contrasting these different solos---taken from alternate takes, various recording sessions, and live radio broadcasts---will give you a better sense of not only Charlie's core concepts, but also how he developed a variety of ideas out of them. Each song is presented with performance notes that include information about the recordings (date, place, personnel, etc.), a lead sheet for the composition, and transcriptions of the live and studio performances placed in chronological order---in both standard notation and tablature. In addition, there is a full analysis of his improvisation style to give you ideas on what to look out for. We've also included a bio, a discussion of his gear, and tributes from over 30 jazz greats. Featuring multiple solos from: * As Long as I Live * Benny's Bugle * Boy Meets Goy (Grand Slam) * Flying Home * Gone with "What" Wind * Good Enough to Keep (Air Mail Special) * Honeysuckle Rose * I've Found a New Baby * Rose Room * The Sheik of Araby