When Bireli Lagrene's Routes to Django: Live
was issued in 1980, the 13-year-old jazz guitarist was immediately
praised by critics as a protégé of Django Reinhardt.
He had already won a prize in a festival at Strasbourg in 1978,
and his appearance at a Gypsy festival was broadcast on television.
For the next five years, Lagrene would mime Reinhardt's style,
even recording versions of the master's "Nuages" and
"Djangology" on Swing '81. Over time, however, his role
as a protégé began to seem limited. "When I
was a kid," Lagrene later recalled, "I used to put on
the record again and again, until I succeeded in redoing him [Reinhardt].
Afterwards, I understood that respecting the great guitarist was
worth much more than imitating him...."
Lagrene was born a Sinti Gypsy on September 4, 1966, in Alsace.
His father had been a prominent guitarist during the 1930s,
and Lagrene started playing guitar at four or five. "My
father was a big Django fan and a Stéphane Grappelli
fan and he just loved this Hot Club de France music," Lagrene
told Peter Anick in Fiddler Magazine. "He also grew up
with it, so since he was a guitar player, he wanted us -- me
and my brother -- to become guitar players and to play Django
Reinhardt's music." By seven, Lagrene was playing jazz,
eventually focusing on Reinhardt's distinct style. "When
I was about nine years old," Lagrene later told Guitar
Player, "I didn't even realize that I could play the guitar
or that I was a musician. I just played it as easily as eating
food. Later, I got together with a guitar teacher to learn about
scales and picking, but he told me I already knew everything,
and he walked away after about half an hour." In his late
teens, Lagrene's musical taste began to evolve as he absorbed
players like Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix; he also began
playing electric guitar. "The concept of the 'heir apparent'
to Django playing distorted rock guitar solos on his Yamaha
solid-bodied instrument must have disillusioned many diehards,"
wrote Andy Mackenzie, "but Lagrene has lost none of his
original ability."
Lagrene has been an active live performer since the 1970s.
In 1984 as his career was just beginning, he appeared at the
Django Reinhardt Tribute at Fat Tuesdays in New York City. "Mr.
Lagrene showed that he is more than a remarkable clone, as he
added his own colorations to the Reinhardt manner, particularly
in his original improvisations," wrote John S. Wilson in
The New York Times. In 1997, Lagrene appeared at the New York
Blue Note with Larry Coryell and Billy Cobham. Lagrene has also
continued to record a steady stream of albums. In 2002, Dreyfus
issued Gypsy Project, a recording that found him returning to
Reinhardt and the classic jazz songbook. "This album should
not be seen as an acceptable substitute for the original Reinhardt
recordings," noted Rick Anderson in Notes, "but should
be considered an essential complement to them by any library
supporting the study of jazz guitar." Dreyfus issued Gipsy
Routes in the late spring of 2008.
