Django Reinhard has been called “the greatest guitarist who ever lived.” During his heyday, the 1930s and 40s, Reinhardt came up with solo and harmonic innovations on the guitar that had a big impact on modern jazz, blues, country, and rock guitar styles.
Together with violinist Stephane Grappelli, Reinhardt came up with a new, European style of jazz, called gypsy jazz, or manouche jazz—by fusing Dixieland, swing jazz, French traditional music, gypsy music, and more. He was the first to pioneer a form of jazz that centered around the guitar, in sharp contrast to American jazz, which was based around horns, drums and piano.
As if the above accomplishments were not amazing enough, Reinhardt achieved them while having to overcome obstacles that would have been insurmountable to pretty much anyone else. He was born a gypsy, or Romani, as they call themselves, and had to overcome extreme poverty, illiteracy, and anti-Romani prejudice and persecution.
On top of all this, there’s the truly mindboggling fact that Reinhardt was a virtuoso guitar player with severely crippled left-hand ring and little fingers. Half his body, including his left hand, was badly damaged in a fire when he was 18, at a point when he was just beginning to gain international fame as a banjo-guitar player. One leg was so badly burned, doctors wanted to amputate, and they also said he’d never play again.
Reinhardt insisted on keeping his leg, and his playing skills. With great determination he invented a new way of playing the guitar, performing virtuoso solos with just his index and middle fingers. If the video clips did not exist of him playing extremely fast runs up and down the fretboard with two fingers, people would forever doubt the veracity of the two-finger story.
Reinhardt’s amazing re-invention of himself as a guitarist has inspired countless musicians facing physical challenges. Most famously, in 1965, Tony Iommi lost the tips of his middle and ring fingers in an industrial accident. Like Reinhardt, he was told he’d never play again. When Iommi’s factory foreman played him a recording of Reinhardt, and explained that the lightning-fast runs were executed with just two fingers, 17-year old Iommi decided to start playing again.
Without Django Reinhardt, jazz and rock guitar, as well as European jazz in general, would today sound very different. Spiritually, he’s also one of the ancestors of heavy metal, for without Reinhardt, there would have been no Black Sabbath.
