Reviews for Gerard Hoffnung

The average rating for Gerard Hoffnung based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-05 00:00:00 Mark Hersch This was a very personal book for me. Django is my favorite guitar player of all time--and I know whereof I speak--my most significant relationship barring my current one was with a genius guitar player who is now a professional teacher of guitar who also jams with bands such as Wilco. So I have heard A LOT of guitar in my life and Django has always been my favorite. Add to that the fact that he was Romany and you have pretty much a human I can't resist. Besides the educated musicians in my life, I have never met anyone who was a huge fan the way that I am. I have many LPS and cds (as many as I could find) but in all my years of collecting I have never found any books on Django's life. There are now others, but this will probably be the definitive bio. Written by a writer for a guitar magazine, the book explores Django's life through music--you get all the personal details there are to get, but you also receive the musician's point of view, which I think is all important as Django himself spoke through music. As his music would indicate, Django was impulsive, warm, wild, and above all gifted. As well as guitarist he was also a painter (a true Fauve). He could barely write and could read even less, yet he managed to change the world of music, especially jazz in really important ways. He had the gift that only true musicians have, that of being able to hear something once and instantly re-create it--this gift was what allowed him to play with Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and his most frequent cohort in music, Stephane Grappelli and not even be able to read music. I learned so much about music and about Django himself through this book and it made me treasure both his music and his personal legacy even more than I already did. One of my favorite things that I learned from this book is that no matter his fame, no matter how much money he accrued, he never lost his Romany self--he frequently took off for the road with his wife and eventually his son in their caravan just to go fishing or to meet up with his many Romany cousins and live the Romany life--he was never totally comfortable in a house, as he loved to hear the rain on the roof of his caravan and to know he could just step outside his caravan and be in the wild. He never lost himself no matter the accolades and he left a legacy of music for his Romany brethren that has been picked up and carried on (including by his sons Babik and Lousson) so that "Gypsy Jazz" will never be lost.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-19 00:00:00 Joerg Laubrinus [Did we really have to go full out "LOL ROMANY PEOPLE STEAL THINGS AND ARE PROUD OF IT" before page 50? I mean, come on. Judging by the fact that it took me two months to get around to writing this review, that kinda got to me. (hide spoiler)]