Gypsy Jazz

Crested Butte Music Festival’s Gypsy Jazz series celebrates one of the most passionate, exhilarating up-tempo styles of jazz today. Steeped in outsider tradition, Gypsy Jazz has a history as engaging as the music. Frank Vignola returns and will be joined by some of today’s leading gypsy jazz musicians. This year’s Festival is guaranteed to put a tap in your foot and smile on your lips!

Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, nicknamed “Django,” was born in 1910 into a family of gypsies and grew up in an encampment close to Paris. Several of his family members were amateur musicians. Reinhardt was a ‘self-taught’ musician and started out on the violin, and guitar playing gypsy music.

As a young man, Reinhardt and his first wife, Forine “Bella” Mayer were very poor and supplemented their income by selling imitation flowers made out of celluloid and paper, highly flammable products. Reinhardt returned home one late November evening in 1928, and accidently knocked over a candle starting a fire that would change his life. Reinhardt and his wife lived but he was severely burned.

Reinhardt received first and second-degree burns over half his body, his right leg was paralyzed and the third and fourth fingers of his left hand were badly deformed from the burns. It was believed he would never play guitar again and doctors wanted to amputate his leg. Reinhardt refused to have the surgery and within a year he was able to walk with the aid of a cane.

Unable to finger the violin, his brother bought Reinhardt a new guitar. In spite of two fingers being partially paralyzed, Reinhardt created a whole new fingering system built around the two fingers on his left hand that had full mobility. His technique turned out to be graceful and precise, almost defying belief.

Reinhardt took up jazz after hearing Louis Armstrong’s recording, Dallas Blues, and was soon playing with local jazz groups. In 1934 he had a chance meeting with violinist, Stéphane Grappelli. In the absence of paid work in their radical new music, the two would jam together, along with a loose circle of other musicians. They formed a string quintet with two other guitars and a string bass. After appearing at the famous Hot Club of France, their fame spread and they became known as The Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

Today the legacy of his music lives on. Gypsy Jazz continues to grow incorporating influences from around the globe, making it one of the freshest and most vibrant music genres on the scene today.