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Title: Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend
ISBN: 0195304489
Author:
Michael Dregni
Publicate Date: 2006-05-12
Publish: 2006-05-12
List Price: $16.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.75
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.41
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Great!
This is a great book! It contents so much information. Very good written. From the cats land, thanks the author for keep alive the Django's legend.
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2: caveat
this biography fills in the gaps between facts so thoroughly with conjecture and fictionalizing that one no longer can quite tell what the known facts are. there's a lot of interesting stuff in this book, but I found the author's approach maddening.
there are so many events depicted with breathless 'you are there' cinematic detail that are based on events that are almost certainly undocumented. Or if they're based on something, no indication is given of what sort of source is being relied on. People's presumed emotions and inner thoughts are described to an improbable and even ridiculous extent. Eventually a pall of suspicion clouds the entire book.
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3: Listen, Read and Listen
I read this book on a recent vacation and was kicking myself for not bringing Django Reinhardt CD's with me to listen to while I read. I have been an admirer of Django's music for some time but was unaware of just how much influence his music had on artists of his time. There are three reasons why I liked this book. One, to understand Django's personality the author tells us a little of the history and culture of the gypsies. Two, the backdrop of Django's life story is the Paris music scene during the 1920s, through the Nazi occupation of WWII, and the birth of bebop in the late 40s and early 50s. And three, the amazing life story of what may be the greatest guitarist ever born. All three of these aspect of the book are brought together to create an outstanding biography of Django Reinhardt. But be warned that reading about this incredible talent may cause an insatiable desire to listen to his music.
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4: "Oh ma mere! Ce n'est pas possible!"
This utterance comes halfway through Michael Dregni's book, and it's one of maybe 50 direct quotes by Django Reinhardt drizzled over 280 pages. Self-conscious about his lack of education, Reinhardt didn't like talking to "gadj??." He is known to have written three letters in his life, and the most extended quote is bogus: an "interview" concocted by an impresario to defame a rival.
It has to be quite a challenge for a biographer to work with so little material. And yet Dregni does an excellent job. While by necessity he has to rely on external testimony and events to make his portrayal, his focus is always on Reinhardt and the extraordinary contradictions of the man: one night dining with royalty, the next night stealing a chicken on a country road; living in a luxury hotel one week, a caravan the next; over-generosity alternating with infuriating pettiness; turning one gig into an all-night jam session, not bothering to show up for the next. You think you know Bohemian? This is Bohemian.
Of course, Django was only verbally reticent. Musically, he is one of the most articulate, expressive players ever. So it's the musical parts of this book that really shine. Partly because of the nationalism of his promoters who wanted to push a French jazz musician, but mostly because of his magical talent (and in spite of a tendency to sleep later than recording session schedules), Reinhardt's output was vast and varied. As I imagine is true for many, I knew the Quintette/Grapelli recordings to the exclusion of almost everything else. So I especially appreciated the discussions of his later career: the weird fact that during the Occupation, when jazz was officially verboten, he achieved his greatest popularity, and his enthusiasm for bebop, which I've always thought he anticipated with his angular, superfast playing.
In the endnotes are many mentions of "interview with author, 2001/2/3..." Aside from the documentary research, Dregni deserves special gratitude for contacting people who knew Reinhardt and who will probably not be around much longer. His efforts have doubtless uncovered facts that, because of the large part of Reinhardt's life that exists only in the oral tradition, would certainly have been lost without them.
Django Reinhardt, one of the more remarkable and mysterious characters of his time, deserves a first-rate biography. This is it.
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5: If your'e into Django
then your going to eat up this book. The writing is a little silly and cliched but there is a LOT of info on Django as well as the history of jazz in Europe. The book rolls along nicely and builds up to a climax 2/3s in just before Django's american tour with Ellington. Then the book becomes an extremely dull onslaught of facts rather than a biographical story. I just wanted it to end. then he did this. then he did this. then he did this. and then he did this. Hello... Did the writer just get bored with the material? Alot of research though so we'll have to give him credit for this. and there isn't a whole lot of writing about Django out there so it will have to suffice.
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