It’s Sunday. Birds are singing. Sun’s shining. No architecture today. Something light, please.
Let’s have music. Something pleasant, but not puerile. Hey, how about some hot jazz from Django Reinhardt, everybody’s favorite zingari, and probably your favorite Belgian, too:
Django’s left hand was burned badly when he was a young man, and he can only use the last two fingers as a sort of blunt instrument for barre chords. It’s enough, ain’t it?
Django is a rare thing in any walk of life. He was an originator of his own style. It’s like Hemingway sort of making up his own method of writing. There’s innovation there, and originality.
Like most people that do original things, it is possible for other people to lovingly imitate them, and you can notice right away the resemblance. It doesn’t detract from it that it’s an homage.Besides, no man makes up his entire persona from whole cloth. The truly original among us just seem to distill all the things that catch their fancy down to such a fine elixir that you can’t really recognize it as an aggregation any more.
Is there any doubt who Joscho Stephan is playing like? I didn’t think so. And it doesn’t make it any less jawdropping a performance for being an imitation, does it?
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If you don’t already know them, you’d also like “Hot Club of Detroit”. The name is a dead giveaway for the music they play.
Internet Ronin–Nope! Silver Dollar City near Branson, MO