Django Reinhardt: Dinah

A concert on the 2nd December 1934 at the Ecole Normale de Musique marked the definitive arrival of the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Imagine how it must have sounded to 1930s jazz fans no drums, no brass, no saxes! Twenty-six days later Reinhardt showed what a short step the campfire extemporizations of a Manouche gypsy guitarist were from jazz improvisation. The group stood out because their jazz was so quintessentially European at a time when everyone elses was so quintessentially American. Their boulevardier brio convincingly suggested that jazz could reflect local culture without sacrificing the elements that made Afro-American jazz so compelling and subversive.