INTERVIEW: Django tribute returns to NYC, this time with NOLA music
Photo: Stephane Wrembel is the creative force behind Django A Gogo. Photo courtesy of Rob Davidson / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
Stephane Wrembel is one of the most important modern-day interpreters of Django Reinhardt, the influential jazz guitarist from the early 20th century. The two share a lot in common, both growing up in the same part of France — the same city of Fontainbleau, in fact. Wrembel keeps the flame alive in many ways, but none more prominent than his annual tribute show, Django A Gogo, at The Town Hall in New York City. This year’s rendition is set for Saturday, May 6.
“I love The Town Hall,” Wrembel said in a recent phone interview. “I hope we will keep on working with them.”
The idea for Django A Gogo came to Wrembel several years ago. He was a known presence on the Django scene, attending and playing festivals dedicated to the guitarist, but what he saw and listened to never seemed to match his expectations. So, with an enterprising spirit, he decided to create his own take, and thus the “Gogo” was formed.
This year’s concert features not only Wrembel, but also Josh Kaye on guitar, Ari Folman-Cohen on bass, Nick Anderson on drums; Simba Baumgartner, Paulus Schaefer, Debi Botos, Samy Daussat and Sam Farthing on guitar; and Aurore Voilqué on violin. The opening act is Trio Dinicu featuring Tommy Davy on guitar and Luann Homzy on violin. That’s a true string-fest.
“I played many festivals, all different kinds of Django festivals, and I kind of knew what things should be,” he said. “I had a pretty clear idea. At first, I was a listener, but then I was a musician. I did different Django camps, different concerts, different things, and I saw what worked and what didn’t work. I really wanted to do a proper celebration of Django’s music. I’m not a promoter. That’s not my job. I don’t make a living promoting shows, you know, but I [wanted] to produce once a year as an artist the best possible tribute to the great Django Reinhardt.”
This year’s Django A Gogo will be special for a number of reasons. Wrembel and his coterie of fellow musicians will offer some songs off the new recording Django New Orleans. In fact, the entire second set is dedicated to this album, and the concert is being billed as a “release show.” This NOLA-centric musical effort seems like a logical connection to make. Reinhardt was a master interpreter of jazz, and New Orleans, after all, is the birthplace of the art form.
“It kind of was born by itself,” Wrembel said of the project. “So jazz was born in New Orleans in the late 19th century. It really is a frame, an archetypal frame, you know. … So every jazz that has been done after is born from that. It’s just an extension of that, nothing else. So that thing is still there, that frame is still existing, and Django started to play that music. But he didn’t play it with brass and percussion. It was played on string instruments. It was a new thing — guitar, violin, upright bass.”
In many ways, as Wrembel explained it, Reinhardt took the gift of jazz from New Orleans and made it something unique, a piece of work that could both honor the roots of the genre and make a clear connection to the guitarist’s own roots of so-called Gypsy jazz and the Sinti-style guitar.
“He learned to play those string instruments with his Gypsy techniques,” Wrembel said. “And then it became something of its own, but it’s really like playing jazz on the strings with the guitars and all. But what hasn’t been done really is to merge it and reattach it to its New Orleans roots, which is mainly is the merging of the brass, including the sousaphone instead of the bass. It’s a very important part of it because the upright bass and the sousaphone don’t groove the same.”
Wrembel’s exploration of the connections between Reinhardt and New Orleans resulted in this new record, which features NOLA songs with that Reinhardt flavor worked in, plus Reinhardt songs with that NOLA flavor worked in. It’s a true gumbo.
“We don’t try to compete with the past, but we try to keep going with the swing, you know,” he said. “People think swing is an old thing. It’s not old; it’s eternal. Swing is swing. We just play it like we play in 2023. We don’t play the same way as they played in the 1920s. Swing is swing. It’s just a groove, you know what I mean, so we play what we play around that groove.”
Wrembel added: “It’s not artificially created. We didn’t decide, OK, let’s do a Django and New Orleans set and hire people and record a bunch of songs. It’s something that really happened on its own. … We created something different and new and fresh. It’s very organic. I would never do anything artificial like that, like pre-thought. It’s something that happened, and then people heard it and were like, ‘We want more. We want more.’ So we kept playing.”
And they will keep playing, this time at The Town Hall for the annual Django A Gogo.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Django A Gogo, featuring Stephane Wrembel, will play Saturday, May 6 at The Town Hall in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
