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Happy Birthday, Django! (01/23)


Caevan O’Shite

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Just thought I'd bump this up, and keep up what's becoming an anual tradition... :cool:

 

(Note the date of the original post, 01-23-2004... )

Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do?

 

~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~

_ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _

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Django, Django, DJANGO!!!

 

(If you repeat that while looking in the mirror, with another mirror behind you, while burning a candle, wearing red socks, and playing poker (or at least solitaire, or throwin' a mean tarot) when you were supposed to be at a big gig- all on the 23rd of January- he'll appear and light up a smoke and give you a guitar lesson if you say you love real swing.)

 

(Well, he'll probably be a bit late, maybe he's gone fishin'; wait a while for him, so you don't miss 'im... )

Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do?

 

~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~

_ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _

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Originally posted by flagshipmile:

Well also keep in mind, the Nazis HATED gypsies. I think they were the only group that was completely wiped out during the holocaust.

Uhmn, define "the only group that was completely wiped out"?

 

They were heavily and unjustly persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, no doubt about it. I'm just not sure I follow you there, that's all...

 

There continues to be a thriving community of proud Gypsies in France (and other parts of Europe) to this day; huge Gypsie-Swing festivals are held, and many Gypsie youths are following Django and other Gypsie-Swing artists, acoustic guitars in hand...

Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do?

 

~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~

_ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _

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Originally posted by flagshipmile:

Well also keep in mind, the Nazis HATED gypsies. I think they were the only group that was completely wiped out during the holocaust.

No, no... Europe's full of them. The Nazis didn't kill them all and wouldn't have done so anyway. Hitler wanted to keep a few tribes of them in a national park.

 

Anyway while we're on the Nazis, I have read somewhere that nobody bothered calling any gipsy witnesses to the Nuremburg trials. This could mean that a) it's hard to track down gipsies or b) the allies themselves weren't all that fussed about them. Probably a bit of each.

 

Personally, I have a very low opinion of actual, real gipsies because I see a fair bit of them.

 

They go through the motions of playing this horrible music on the metro every morning and use their kids to help them beg. So the kids wind up as illiterates, with few useful skills and are usually forced to turn to petty crime or begging. I have never encountered any other culture where parents don't want their kids to prosper and do better than they did.

 

And they normally live in trailers with no electricity or running water so they are always getting ill. They're not big on personal hygiene either (I hear they believe the body to be dirty in itself) so they have a life expectancy of forty something.

 

Now, this is because their culture insists that they stay away from the rest of us. No schools, no jobs, no living among us "outsiders".

 

Fair enough. Once upon a time they could travel and make a living fixing pots and pans (they're great metalworkers), but now everything is fenced in and it's cheaper to buy stuff new from China than to get some Gipsy to fix it. So they're basically up shit creek.

 

I think it's important to notice and remember all this stuff, racist as it may seem, because it goes to highlight what a huge "journey" Django actually made, from his world to ours. It's a bit like that "Amadeus" movie. Sometimes genius, especially artistic genius, arrives in the most unlikely packages and we just have to deal with it.

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Well, Gypsies definitely didn't get "completely wiped out" as they have one of the most widespread diaspora of any culture. Basically they went everywhere from their earliest roots in India.

We not only have them to thank for DR but for the guitar itself.

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Originally posted by Kramer Ferrington III.:

Originally posted by d:

We not only have them to thank for DR but for the guitar itself.

:confused: Care to elucidate on that?

 

I thought it was the Arabs.

The guitar derives ultimately from the stringed instruments of Asia, like the sitar, with which it shares an obvious name connection (I forget the exact etymology, off hand, but as I recall "tar" is a Sanskrit root indicating stringed instrument; prefixes indicate number of strings).

Gypsy/Romany people, who originated in India & left in a couple of waves of travel to the North & West, carried these instruments into the Mid-East & gradually through North Africa & Eastern Europe.

They met again in Spain, where the divergent branches came together to develop Flamenco music.

 

India, like China, is one of the primordial world cultures, a fact that's often forgotten or even ignored in modern society that seeks to place everything in Western contexts.

For example, we commonly speak of "Arabic" numerals but they were developed in India. Similarly, Sanskrit is one of the world's oldest languages & is in fact the hidden root of most European languages, something again, that may be traced to the Gypsy diaspora.

 

Incidentally, the modern guitar is only about 150 years old. Previously there was an incredible & totally unsystematic set of varying versions with differing numbers of strings & designs.

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"...and the process seems to be ongoing... and going... and going... " :freak:

 

Eric, 'eight is enough!' ;):D:thu:

 

"How did those multiple posts happen?"

 

Sunspots. U.F.O.'s. Hippy Cultists smoking the pot. The lost Magic-Fingers beds of Atlantis. The Amityville Joy-Ride. Bad Acid at Camp David. Iddunno, but I won't admit to being clueless.

Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do?

 

~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~

_ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _

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