Gypsy jazz has long been associated with famous Belgian musician Django Reinhardt, the man who is said to have invented the style of music.
But Montreal’s Denis Chang has become known as the new ambassador for the genre.
“People have called me that, but really, I just like music,” said Chang in an email interview with the Eagle. “I like studying music (not just Gypsy jazz), reading about it, talking about it, writing about it, sharing knowledge with others.”
That’s all there is to it for Chang, who said he only wants to play and share the music that he loves, which is what he has been doing since 2008 with the Denis Chang Gypsy Jazz Quartet.
Chang said what first attracted him to the genre was Django Reinhardt himself, describing him as ‘the best musician and guitarist the world has ever seen.’
“He was a major pioneer and arguably the first to take advantage of everything the guitar had to offer,” he said. “While others in those days would pick a few notes, strum chords, he would use all sorts of techniques and ornaments that the guitar could do and he was not afraid to use them.”
Reinhardt was a Gypsy and, more specifically, he was Sinti, a group of Romani people from Central Europe. Chang said he discovered that Reinhardt had ‘single-handedly revolutionized the musical identity of the Sinti.’
And being immersed in that Romani culture was something Chang said is very important for the style of music.
Chang spent years playing alongside the Gypsies of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany to really learn the style.
“Beyond the actual technical or theoretical aspects of the music, spending time with people from that culture helps us understand the environment in which the music evolved and helps us get more connected to the actual spirit of the music,” he explained.
Chang is one of the few non-Gypsies to have learned the language of Romani, and is one of very few outside of the Gypsy community to sing rare Gypsy songs in the language.
“From what I’ve been told by scholars, the Sinti dialect of Romani is the least studied and the most mysterious dialect of all Romani languages. It is a very secretive language and many Gypsies do not like that outsiders understand their language,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered it either, but I do have a lot of knowledge about it. It’s very difficult to describe the language because it is always evolving and borrowing words from other languages.”
And Chang’s Gypsy Jazz Quartet is something that is always developing as well, with Chang describing it as being a ‘constant evolution’ with so very few Gypsy jazz players in Canada. The quartet has become his way of presenting the style to Canadian audiences.
“I always try to play with the musicians that can best fulfill my vision of the music,” he said.
On this tour, Chang said he would be playing with musicians from B.C. and a 17-year-old saxophone prodigy named Connor Stewart who he discovered at a Gypsy jazz festival in Victoria.
You can catch Denis Chang’s Gypsy Jazz Quartet Feb. 7 as part of the Bragg Creek Performing Arts season.
For more information visit braggcreekperformingarts.com.
