S02E02 – Django Reinhardt, Paris, 1928

Django gli rispose che sì, lui suona in giro solo quando gli pare e che probabilmente in quel periodo non gli pareva.

Paris, 1928

Areas around the Porte de Italie, narrow streets that disappear into the immense empty spaces, scattered with sordid huts. An abandoned lot, limited on the left by a wooden fence, on the right by the walls of a red brick factory and piles of coal. Ragged children wander around playing around a caravan, what’s more in tune with this acrobat’s lodging, a cart amid a population of ragpickers and street vendors.

In this place, described by the words of Pierre Lhande, lives Django Reinhardt. He lives quite carefree, there, in that borderland together with his people. The Manouche, as the nomadic Sinti people are called in France. He lives in his mother’s caravan even though Bella, his wife, is pregnant and he, who is sixteen, feels that it is time to take responsibility and look for another caravan for his family.

The gypsies were a big family, but each family had to have its own caravan. So, Django’s was provided by his father-in-law. From the moment he had his wagon, Django changed, he seemed like another man. To the astonishment of all the Manouche of Porte d’Italie, he took up the habit of returning home at regular times, after the dance.

The Bal Musette, so enchanting, so European. It is what is played and danced to in Paris in the 1920s. A popular music borrowed here and there, as always. On one side the traditionalists tied to the bagpipes and the hurdy-gurdy of central France, on the other the popular Bal Musette, where the accordion played by migrants and the children of Italian migrants reigns supreme. In the fifth and eleventh arrondissements of Paris there are plenty of cafés where the traditionalists of the Bal Musette gradually give way to the “modernists” between the classy venues closer to the center and the more barrier-like, shadier venues, where the rich went to find more real, exotic and why not even extreme experiences.

The Bal Musette? People danced it because it was simpler than other popular or ballroom dances. The venues weren’t large, imagine a lot of people and the orchestra, and where do you dance? Imagine that the entrance was free. You entered and at the counter you bought tokens for the dances. Each dance, one token. The owner would pass through the middle of the dance floor halfway through the dance and collect that nice heavy token with the name of the venue stamped on it. They danced the Valse Musette, the Tango Musette, the Paso Musette, all forms adapted from the original dances, often faster and with simpler steps. There was also a dance born specifically from the Musette, the Java. It seemed original, a kind of Esperanto of dance.

The Manouche, the gypsies, were perfect to play that music. Wandering people, children of none and all lands. They play the Tango as well as the Waltz and the Polkas as if they knew how to do nothing else. Django had learned it like so many gypsy children before him. For them, learning about life does not follow the conventions of society as we understand it. Children and young people grow up immersed in the community, where contact with adults is frequent and constant. In this context, proximity, which in our hyper-structured world is often underappreciated, is the rule rather than the exception. There are no music schools or writing, and musical teaching takes place within the family, through parents, siblings, uncles and cousins. Lots of cousins.

Django hates the repertoire of those dance bands. He calls it mediocre and disgusting but despite everything he continues to frequent those smoky dance halls, full of people, where he plays his banjo. He earns good money and has a lot of fun watching those rich kids looking for adventure get their money taken by fake policemen paid by the club to act out fake raids, to make the experience more real for him down there in the filthy and smelly venues.

It is the first of November 1928, when Django is playing the Banjo with the Alexander Orchestra and Jack Hylton enters the Dancing La Java. It is needless to say what a discordant note the entrance of such a person represents in such a barrier place. Considered a magnate of syncopated music, the first to play jazz (or almost) at the Paris Opera. An Englishman skilled in business who took inspiration from white American dance music groups such as Paul Whiteman’s orchestra which in turn stole here and there “trivializing”, some say, the music of African Americans. In evening dress, cigar in mouth, escorted by elegant ladies Jack Hylton makes his entrance into that hot and humid place with the acid smell of sweaty dancing humanity.

This intrusion into the territory of kiss-stealing rascals, with rolled up sweaters and caps hanging down over their ears, was not looked upon favorably, until it was learned that the stranger had come to listen to Django. It seems that after the concert the stranger told Django that he was in Paris because he was looking for a skilled musician who could handle both the banjo and the guitar, and he also said that he had looked around for a while without finding him. Django replied that yes, he only plays around when he feels like it and that he probably didn’t feel like it at that time. Then the stranger told him that his orchestra plays jazz and Django, a bit annoyed, replied that yes, he had heard of him. Judging by his attire, the stranger didn’t seem very accustomed to that kind of resistance and then, irritated, he banged his fist and said: enough, I’ll engage you, tomorrow you’ll come to London with me!

He, the little bohemian, could have worn a tuxedo and earned a fortune, a rare and unique opportunity.  That stranger who had come especially for him, to take him away from that musical circuit he hated to finally do something more modern and exciting, or so he thought.

That evening Maurice Alexander offers to take him home by taxi, it is a cold night, it is November 2, 1928 and he is in a hurry to rush home and tell his wife everything. Alexander, however, as a good orchestra conductor, wants to talk to him to try to convince him to stay.

I can’t stop you from following your path; but you know, kid, jazz isn’t very safe. Our music has already been tried. It works. Theirs is just beginning. You’re taking a big risk. But those of your kind love adventure…. If it doesn’t work out with the Englishman you can always come back to me, okay?

He gropes his way to the bed inside the dark caravan, Bella is blissfully asleep. She is pregnant but it is still early for a big belly. Slowly Django takes off his clothes and makes his way to bed but bumps into a bunch of flowers on the cabinet which falls noisily to the floor making, obviously, a great racket. Sleepy and vaguely disturbed, Bella lights a candle stub to illuminate the disaster, scold her husband and finally help him get to bed as soon as possible but the already compromised stub breaks in two and the top falls on the cellulose flowers from the Day of the Dead setting them on fire. The flames flare up in a flash and Bella manages to throw herself out of the window screaming, with her hair completely burned, while Django remains trapped in the flames, suffocating, falls to the ground, his left hand clutching a blanket with which he tries to protect himself.

The screams wake up the entire camp and everyone runs with jugs and basins of water. One of them reaches Django’s face and he wakes up and, driven by instinct, he throws himself out beyond the flames, mad with pain. The wind blowing from the North towards Orly that night fueled the fire and by dawn nothing is left of that caravan. He arrives at the hospital with a leg so badly burned that the surgeon is ready to cut it off. His left hand, the one that held the blanket, is also compromised. Two fingers are definitely gone, and all the rest is raw, painful flesh. Django is terrified.

Fate has hastened events: within a few hours he sees himself promised to the glory of the world and immediately afterwards he feels crushed by that same world.

Jack Hilton, the stranger, was probably the last person to hear him play with his left hand still intact. Lucky him. When he heard it he despaired but I can’t say whether for the suffering of poor Django or for the loss of a musician he had sought so much. The fact is that a few weeks later he recorded a song in Paris with the title “I Must Have That Man”. A peculiar title, given the circumstances, don’t you think?

Chloroform anesthesia is extremely dangerous, but it seems to be the only way after almost a year of treatment and the wounds have not yet healed. They proceed with draining the wounds and then burning them with silver nitrate. The purulent flesh heals, Django wakes up, his leg is safe. But that semi-paralyzed hand drives him crazy. His brother Joseph, against all family advice, brings a guitar to Django in the hospital. It was new, brand new. Needless to say, Django spends days and weeks playing, or trying to play, that guitar on the hospital bed. His hand begins to respond slowly and he miraculously recovers more and more quickly. The banjo is impossible, it would take too much strength but the guitar? It has a softer neck, softer strings.  Two fingers don’t respond but the index and middle fingers work great, so he invents his own way of playing both technically and harmonically. A different, original way, his own and exclusively his, tailored to his atrophied hand.

Eighteen months. How many things can happen in 18 months? Eighteen months to heal. But how many things have changed in those 18 months in music? The evolution of syncopated music in France has progressed rapidly. Enough with the antics inherited from the minstrels, all that approximate racket. Guitars were replacing banjos while double basses gradually took the place of tubas and sousaphones. Rhythms were softening and becoming less bouncy while the wind instruments were softening, adapting to more muffled atmospheres, approaching the Gypsy folklore, mitigated by the first black musicians arriving from overseas.

I clearly remember when Django and Stephane Grappelli met for the first time. So different, yet so similar. The meeting was quite ordinary. Both were begging in the same area. That’s all. They started talking and it turned out that they were both musicians. Django had literally gone crazy since a painter had made him listen to the Ellington and Armstrong records he had brought from the United States. He talked about nothing but that jazz. Stephané was also enchanted by that music, but he was more down to earth and doubted that his instrument, the violin, could have a role in that music.

Django and Stephane often spent time together. They played with one singer or another and took advantage of the breaks to pursue some of Django’s ideas, but Stephané was not convinced and held back. He claimed to have a realistic view. He was aware that, for French musicians, living off jazz was utopian. Django, on the other hand, had a completely different opinion on the matter. For him, the very idea of earning a living was a bizarre idea.

Django wouldn’t give up! I remember one night he invited me into his caravan, his wife was cooking dinner. We ate, smoked and drank and of course there was a violin hidden in the corner, I don’t know if he also wanted to write “Stephané” on it to be more explicit?! We played Honeysuckle rose.

A lot of time passes between the moment Django and Stephane meet and the moment when Reinhardt’s dream of setting up a small string orchestra begins to take shape. They are always together, even one evening when they are booked for a tea dance at the Hotel Carlige by the double bass player Louis Vola. During the break Grappelli, Reinhardt, Vola play something together and they are joined by Joseph (Django’s brother) and Roger Caput on guitar.  That evening, even if unaware, the great Quintette de Hot Club De France is born.

One evening, Emile Savitry, a painter passionate about jazz, called me. He said: Pierre, are you still a boss in that jazz promotion association? The Hot Jazz De France? Good, because tonight I must make you hear something. And he took me, or rather dragged me, beyond Port de Italie down through the Manuche caravans to listen to a gypsy.  It was Django Reinhardt; he was playing with his brother. Well, it was spectacular, I decided that everyone should hear him.

Studio recordings, incredible live performances and numerous line-up changes followed, and Stephané Grappelli, Django and his brother Joseph remained together for years and for many tours throughout Europe. The strong blood bond among the Manuche kept Django and Joseph closely connected. What united Django and Stephané was their absolute mutual respect. Django had a deep admiration for Stephané, recognizing him as a man of great culture. For Django, his inability to write music was a significant limitation. However, his mind was an infinite forge of ideas, so much so that he often failed to complete one before others emerged. Stephane, for his part, was unsurpassed in transcribing and organizing those ideas. He collected them, transformed them into melodies on the piano and made them understandable to others. Together, they formed an inseparable, perfectly complementary duo. 

They were in London in the summer of 1939 and had just finished recording a magnificent version of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”. A magnificent piano introduction played by Stephané Grappelli that accompanies Django’s entire theme in an arrangement that seems like a recitative, between romance and drama. A version for two of a wonderful piece, almost as if they were artistically dedicating it to each other.

Someday he’ll come along

The man I love

And he’ll be big and strong

The man I love

And when he comes my way

I’ll do my best to make him stay

He’ll look at me and smile

I’ll understand

On September 1, 1939, a few hours after this magical recording, in the city of London the sirens screamed to announce an air raid, the Germans had invaded Poland during the night and that same morning Westminster ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the cities to the countryside. Great Britain was at war. Django was so scared that he decided to return immediately to Paris, leaving everything behind, including his guitar and luggage. Stephané Grappelli, ill, remained stuck in London. The unicum was divided. Only war could divide them and so it was for its entire duration. It was a minor crime, but still, with due consideration, a crime against humanity.

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