An Interview with Christophe Lartilleux : Toulouse' s "Professor" of Django-style Guitar

By Peler Anick

The Quintet ofthe Hot Club of France was a supergroup ofits day, an all- string jazz group that featured not one, but two of the top instrumentalists of the jazz age. In this interview, we ' Il discuss Stéphane s legendary partnel; Django Reinhardt, with Christophe Lartilleux, a jazz guitarist living in Toulouse, France. Like many ofhisfellow Manouche musicians, Christophe grew up listening to the music of Django. Now with his group Latcho Drom (which means "Have a goodjoumey" in the Gypsy language), he is among the vanguard of modem interpreters of "jazz manouche. " Christophe is unusual in that he has chosen to spread the music he loves not just by his performances but also by teaching. In this interview, he describes how he goes about teaching the instrumental technique that makes Django s style so unique and powel:/ill.

This interview was conducted in French, so I apologize for any inaccuracies in my translation offered here. We began by discussing the historical background of Django and the music now known as jazz manouche.

Christophe Lartilleux: Django was the flfSt guitar hero, the first guitar soloist. He put together a group with Grappelli in the' 30s. He had heard Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, who were probably the flfSt guitar/violin duo in the swing style across the Atlantic. But the swing that we play, it's really Django who invented itDjango discovered jazz in the '30s with Armstrong and Ellington, but he mixed in bis own style, wbich was based on Gypsyrousic. The two things that are most important for us are that he played the jazz of the United States with the culture of the East, the culture of the travellers, the gitans, the tziganes.

At the time that Django discovered jazz, what were most Gypsy musicians playing?

At that time, there were no records to listen to. It was a farnily scelle. It was necessary to go to a concert to hear music. There was an area known as the "zone" around Paris, where the poor and working folk lived, and it was there that Django lived in bis caravan. In the beginning, Django worked with bis brothers and cousins. In the '20s, they discovered that they could accompany accordionists in Paris. He played with Guerino, the Brothers Peguri, the top musicians who played the musette style. This was the popular music of the time for dancing, for the bals.

Were they playing violin as weIl at that time, or primarily the guitar?

Both. Certainly the violin. Because the guitar was not an instrument for soloing. It was for rhythmic accompaniment. It wasn 't an instrument you could play like a saxophone or truropet.

When did others start to copy Django s style ?

It was transmitted froro father to son. Everyone copied Django. But there weren 't many other virtuosos during this time. There was his brother Joseph, the Ferret Brothers, Baro and Matelo. It was a very closed milieu, among a few farnilies. The successors of Django were rouch, rouch later, after the war.

Are most of the folks playing this style today from musical families ? There are five generations of musicians in my Manouche farnily. With ….

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