ion camps. In France, they were used as slave labour on farms and in factories. During the Holocaust an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Romani throughout Europe were eventually killed.
Hitler and Joseph Goebbels viewed Jazz as un-German counterculture. Nonetheless, Goebbels stopped short of a complete ban on Jazz, which now had many fans in Germany and elsewhere. Official policy towards Jazz was much less strict in occupied France, according to author Andy Fry, with jazz music frequently played on both Radio France, the official station of Vichy France, and Radio Paris, controlled by the Germans. A new generation of French Jazz fans, the Zazous, had arisen and swollen the ranks of the Hot Club. In addition to the increased interest, many American musicians based in Paris during the thirties had returned to the US at the beginning of the war, leaving more work for French musicians. Reinhardt was the most famous jazz musician in Europe at the time, working steadily during the early war years and earning a great deal of money, yet always under threat.
Reinhardt expanded his musical horizons during this period. Using an early amplification system, he was able to work in more of a big-band format, in large ensembles with horn sections. He also experimented with classical composition, writing a Mass for the Gypsies and a symphony. Since he did not read music, Reinhardt worked with an assistant to notate what he was improvising. His modernist piece "Rhythm Futur" was also intended to be acceptable to the Nazis…
1943 also saw the tide of war turning against the Germans, with a considerable darkening of the situation in Paris. Severe rationing was in place, and members of Django's circle were being captured by the Nazis or joining the resistance.
Reinhardt's first attempt at escape from Occupied France led to capture. Fortunately for him, a jazz-loving German, Luftwaffe Officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, allowed him to return to Paris. Reinhardt made a second attempt a few days later, but was stopped in the middle of the night by Swiss border guards, who forced him to return to Paris again.
Unlike the estimated 600,000 Romani people who were interned and killed in the Porajmos [the Romani genocide], Reinhardt survived the war without incident.
One of his songs, 1940's "Nuages", became an unofficial anthem in Paris to signify hope for liberation. During a concert at the Salle Pleyel, the popularity of the song was such that the crowd made him replay it three times in a row. The single sold over 100,000 copies.
Nuages here.
Reinhardt, like many French cultural heroes (Jacques Brel, for instance, or Georges Simenon) was actually born in Belgium. He died in 1953, aged just 43. Stéphane Grappelli died in 1997, having had something of a career revival in the 1970s.
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