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Great Music Dies Hard
A New Take on the Classic Cords of Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt has to be one of the most esoteric musicians of the 20th century. Born in France of Romani lineage, Reinhardt grew up in Gypsy encampments in the French countryside, formed a Gypsy band that reinvented the classical American Jazz form by fusing it with their own particular sensibility, and toured Europe to spread their unique innovation with an exhaustive audience. Surprisingly, Reinhardt’s Gypsy/jazz mash-up caught on, first with European audiences and later in America. Eventually, however, Reinhardt grew to feel alienated from the world of the mid-20th century. He returned to France where he threw himself back into the ways of the Romani for the remainder of his life. Nevertheless, Reinhardt’s incomparable style of melding two pre-existing art forms to craft something unique has gained him continued acclaim in the music world.
Reinhardt’s achievements have given birth to a new musical form that can be seen this spring at Barbes in Brooklyn, where another European jazz musician is following in his predecessor’s considerable footsteps. Stephane Wrembel has much in common with Django: he’s of French origin, studied for years with Gypsy musical artists, and has a distinctive approach to performing jazz. However, Wrembel’s “The Django Experiment” is hardly a simple repetition of what was accomplished in the past, but rather the talented musician almost one-up’s Reinhardt with an even more exotic melding of musical styles to create a “swinging” whole. Wrembel again gives us a mixture of “Gypsy swing” and jazz, but adds in musical sounds from all over the world. He takes us from the Middle East to Africa to India in the space of only a few cords.
While listening to Wrembel’s performance, it’s hard not to get swept up in a swirling collage of music that sweeps over the audience like a wave of sonic light. It’s as if Wrembel has found a way to capture a transient lightshow and perform it as music; different “colors” or textures emerge from a melodic whole, different strings bringing us to new locales, emotionally and tonally if not physically. Much like his predecessor, Wrembel has found success with his idiosyncratic style. Stephane Wrembel has already recorded several albums, but there’s nothing that can compare with seeing him live.
For more information, please visit www.barbesbrooklyn.com