guitar echoes

Django Reinhardt is the guy talked about in Guitar for Dummies, along with Andres Segovia ( pardon my spelling (if it be wrong) ). And when I say 'talked about', I should also mention hushed tones, and printed letters kneeling in awe, if they could do that.

If you would read the book end to end, and a few more books like it, and practise a few hundred hours - if you're a bright-eyed, green behind the ears, not-a-natural enthusiast with loads of time and energy to dedicate to the craft, you could become somewhat as good at playing the guitar as the semi-mythical Django.

I say semi-mythical because for a long long time I didn't get to hear any of his works, never heard anybody mention him, less discuss/rate him, never saw a printed or an internet word about him. All but non-existent, you might think.

Then I got Mafia , and played it for hours on end, foregoing work and sleep (until the Telephone Calls happened, which is a story for another day and time) . And found the soundtrack absolutely delightful. And forgot about it.

Today I got a link from reddit, who got it from steveaudio's blog which pointed to a link from boing-boing which pointed to link which had a downloadable Quicktime clip of the master at work.

Since it sounded familiar , I checked the Mafia game soundtrack and found that it did contain Django Reinhardt's works. Pleasantly surprised. That's about it. Sorry, there's no deeper plot.

Good stuff. Listen, if you can, and hear the guitar sing. Again, it might not be your cup of tea, as it isn't entirely mine either.

Btw, a bit of trivia for you. The master used only two fingers on his left hand(and thumb), the remaining two were injured in a fire during childhood.

and oh, I guess 'Django' was a nickname

good pic here