Welcome To Gypsy Jazz by Fête Manouche

 


Photo by Gail Berman
Jazz Manouche - literally “gypsy jazz” - is an exotic brand of swing music, born in France in the early 1930s. The Lord and Master of Jazz Manouche was Django Reinhardt, a gypsy born in Belgium in 1910. In 1934 Django began a series of recordings with a group called the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. These recordings have become the foundation for a massive group of devoted Django followers throughout the world, to whom Jazz Manouche is more than a kind of music: it’s a way of life.  

Clarinetist Dan Levinson discovered Jazz Manouche while living in Paris in the early 1990s and was mesmerized. In 2004 he assembled Fête Manouche and since then has been keeping the Django legacy alive in the New York area, captivating audiences both young and young at heart.