Here is a fascinating taste of where
Django's art was headed during the last years of his life. By the late '40s,
Django was feeling somewhat disconnected from audiences both in the U.S.A. and in Europe. He found himself in the strange position of being too modern for the traditionalists and too
traditional for certain modernists. Much of this divisiveness was invented by uptight music critics and exacerbated by shortsighted journalists.
Django's musical reality was interwoven throughout the many different fibers of that continuous braid of contrasting traditions known as
jazz. His musical persona inevitably rendered contrived categories virtually meaningless.
Django should be considered the perfect example of non-linear individuality. He embodied the calmly anarchic aspect of
jazz in ways that confounded self-appointed experts who desperately wanted to pigeonhole him. But pigeonholes are surely for pigeons, not artists.
Django's poetics could not and still won't be contained. Consisting of 40 sides culled from studio acetate recordings made for radio broadcast purposes in Rome, this package contains some of
Django's most ambitious work. Together again for the very last time,
Reinhardt and
Grappelli had only recently been reunited, and were gigging at a swank Roman restaurant in the company of a few younger musicians. Apparently the management sternly advised the band to keep the music accessible so as not to rile the patrons. Upon finding themselves in a room with microphones and only the engineer to answer to, these musicians obviously relished every opportunity to let loose and follow their intuitive impulses, a dynamic most often encountered in live performance. The spontaneity is at times breathtaking.
Django in particular can be heard stretching out like never before. At times his playing almost brings to mind the careful recklessness of
Eugene Chadbourne. He moves beyond showy dexterity to something scruffier and more rambunctious. Here is a clear precedent for that freedom of expression that flowered consistently in most music during the second half of the 20th century.
Django was very inspired by what the critics called
bebop; some of his lines resemble those of
Charlie Parker. Older material revisited during these sessions sounds wonderfully transformed; rather than the steady chunk-chunk of rhythm guitars, there's more modern, pared-down support from piano, bass, and drums. Instead of the bright and bouncy
Hot Club swing of the '30s, here are freshly inspired interactions between guitarist and violinist, each willing to take the music a little further than previous conditions had allowed. Slower numbers glow with greater dramatic intensity. When the tempo picks up, there is a wildness to their improvising that perfectly matches the state of the world at that time, and hints at innovations yet to come.
"Undecided" soars far beyond its stylistic origins, light years away from
Fats Waller's slow version of 1939.
Django positively rocks on
"It's Only a Paper Moon," while
"I Can't Give You Anything But Love" builds to marvelous levels of complexity.
"Bricktop" displays a fascinating pointillism with harmonically advanced ideas bouncing off the walls.
"Webster" is a
Reinhardt original, closely resembling certain themes associated with violinist
Eddie South during the 1950s. It was named after the recording device
Django used during a run of employment at a theater in Brussels in December of 1938. The machine in question was a Webster brand wire recorder, manufactured in the United States of America.
Reinhardt also concocted a piece he called
"Micro" or
"Mike," apparently in honor of the same apparatus. Both
"Webster" and
"Micro" are notably
boppish in structure and spirit. Here then is the culmination of transformational energies that were just beginning to surface back in 1940 on recordings like
"Oiseaux des Iles." The music never stops evolving. And
Django was a gifted visionary. How fitting that he is quoted as having said in 1948: "Don't talk to me about music! At the moment I'm painting...." ~ arwulf arwulf
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