Django Allstars bring their renowned Gypsy jazz back to Northern California

In the final months of his life, the transcendent Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt despaired that he’d been forgotten, and that his singular contributions to jazz would go unrecognized.

Only 43 when he died of a heart attack in the spring of 1953, Reinhardt had created the Gypsy jazz sound some two decades earlier with his virtuosic partner, French violinist Stéphane Grappelli, in the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Translating Louis Armstrong’s swing into a string band format, the Hot Club was the first European innovation to influence jazz. Rather than being overlooked, Reinhardt’s legacy is more expansive than ever.

The Django Festival Allstars, one of the primary vehicles connecting the French Romani (or Manouche) community to North America, returns to California for a series of pe