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For the last week and half, Paris has been celebrating the 100th birthday of one of the world's great jazz guitarists and the founder of gypsy jazz Django Reinhardt.
A square near where Reinhardt's family parked their caravans was named after the jazz master, and the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, was on hand to do the honors for Reinhardt. “He was a Roma, he was a rebel," said Delanoe, "and he is
someone who represents the culture of traveling people.”
"Behind Delanoe, a band made up mainly of Reinhardt's descendants played east European-tinged gypsy pieces."
And it is a relief to know that the music carried the crowd away and
"the gathering of press and fedora-hatted relatives, however, could hardly sit still and soon crowded the stage to dance." --Reuters
What could be more appropriate than to celebrate the King of Gypsy Jazz with happy feet?
Reinhardt was born in Belgium and grew up in gypsy camps close to Paris. He was a guitar prodigy but also played banjo and violin from an early age--and played professionally at Bal-musette halls in Paris. The real kicker is that at age 18 he was badly burned in a terrible fire in his caravan, and doctors thought he'd never play guitar again. But he somehow retrained himself to play all of his guitar solos with only two fingers of his fret hand along with his lightning quick right.
From
Wikipedia:
With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, he cofounded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek[2] as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz." Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing", "Belleville", "Djangology", "Swing '42" and "Nuages" (French for "Clouds").
