Lycée George-Sand La Châtre

Django Reihnardt is, still today, considerd as one of the most talented guitarists of all time.

His typical guitar skill, renowned between thousands, is great and awesome.

The fabulous guitarist who was Django Reinhardt was the creator of a new style of jazz. This new style was called "Gypsy Jazz".

To really let you understand that he infuenced a lot of music generally and not just the jazz music I can give you the exemple of Jimi Hendrix who was also one of the greatest guitar player of all time ; but Jimi Hendrix was a rock guitar player and there is a joke about jazz and rock guitarists and if you want to know, I can tell you now.

So, here is the joke :

"What is the difference between a rock guitar player and a jazz guitarist ? The only difference is that a rock guitarist plays three chords in front of ten thousand people and a jazz guitar player ten thousand chords in front of three people."

But this is just a joke and I don’t really agree with that because sometimes rock guitar is very simple to play (for example Satisfaction or Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones) but if you take for exemple Dazed And Confused or Babe I’m Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppelin this isn’t a piece of cake ! I also think that a lot of people like jazz (me for exemple) because this is a very stirring music.

To come back on the subject, what I wanted to tell you is that, like you certainely know, Jimi Hendrix’s group was called "Band of Gypsys" as a tribute to Django Reinhardt.

This last has also inspired Mark Knopfler, the singer and guitar player of Dire Straits, a lot and he has a really good picking technique. You can hear it for example on Sultans of Swing which is one of their most famous titles.

To come back to Django Reinhardt, he was also the hero of the Tzigan people certainely because of his celebrity and his good technic.