Who Is Django?

A lot of you probably know (which is why you probably wound up here) that Django Reinhardt was a Belgium (some say French) gypsy who lived during the early and middle part of the 20th century. He was an exceptional guitar player. But early in life he suffered terrible burns to his left hand and was unable to use his third and fourth fingers. As a guitarist, I know I would not be able to produce any type of chord or even play single strings without some difficulty, if at all. I probably would have given up and taken up harmonica or jews harp. (Both of which I have tried with little success).

But not Django.

Django developed a way of playing that used triads or three notes, plus incredibly lightning fast single string plucking (with a pick, some say, almost a half inch thick). He almost, you should pardon the expression, single handedly developed a whole new style of playing jazz that revolutionized the genre and literally put Europe on the map that had previously only contained New Orleans, Chicago, New York, St. Louis and Kansas City. With a few stops in between, of course, like Memphis, Detroit and Boston. He sought out a new way of looking at something and then went ahead and produced it.

This is how this blog, I hope, will turn out.

I love the joy that listening and playing Django's gypsy jazz gives me. I love all the romantic things in life that sometimes we take for granted, like music, art, poetry, history, television and movies and I would like to talk about them . But, like Django, I suspect some folks will see my take on thing differently and will let me know about it.

Please do.

If it turns out that we end up in the mud, as Shel Silverstein put it in Johnny Cash's wonderful interpretation of 'A Boy Named Sue'; "A kickin' and a gougein', (metaphorically, of course) well, so be it. As long as we can remain friends.

So that is why this is called Django's Djoint. And I hope to be hearing from you real soon.