Of all the styles of jazz to emerge in the twentieth century, none
is more passionate, more exhilaratingly up-tempo, or more steeped
in an outsider tradition than Gypsy Jazz. And there is no one more
qualified to write about Gypsy Jazz than Michael Dregni, author of
the acclaimed biography, Django.
A vagabond music, Gypsy Jazz is played today in French Gypsy bars,
Romany encampments, on religious pilgrimages--and increasingly on
the world's greatest concert stages. Yet its story has never been
told, in part because much of its history is undocumented, either
in written form or often even in recorded music. Beginning with
Django Reinhardt, whose dazzling Gypsy Jazz became the toast of
1930s Paris in the heady days of Josephine Baker, Picasso, and
Hemingway, Dregni follows the music as it courses through caravans
on the edge of Paris, where today's young French Gypsies learn
Gypsy Jazz as a rite of passage, along the Gypsy pilgrimage route
to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer where the Romany play around their
campfires, and finally to the new era of international Gypsy stars
such as Bireli Lagrene, Boulou Ferre, Dorado Schmitt, and Django's
own grandchildren, David Reinhardt and Dallas Baumgartner.
Interspersed with Dregni's vivid narrative are the words of the
musicians themselves, many of whom have never been interviewed for
the American press before, as they describe what the music means to
them. Gypsy Jazz also includes a chapter devoted entirely to
American Gypsy musicians who remain largely unknown outside their
hidden community.
Blending travelogue, detective story, and personal narrative, Gypsy
Jazz is music history at its best, capturing the history and
culture of this elusive music--and the soul that makes it swing.
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