One song in the style of another - 4

Slightly more surprising, this one, in the sense that it qualifies at all - I knew it as a Gypsy Swing standard long before I had heard the original.

This tune started life as a Russian song in 3/4 time, before being carried off on the back of a vardo to become a Manouche standard in 4/4 in the scarred and twisted hands of Django Reinhardt.

This version features five of the six finest Gypsy swing players alive today (Jimmy Rosenberg was, iirc, in a Dutch prison at the time) - Bireli Lagrene, Stochelo Rosenberg, Angelo Debarre, Tchavolo Schmitt and Dorado Schmitt, starting off with Django's solo in unison before each doing their own thing. Bireli's comping at the end of Stochelo's solo around 5'45" paticularly sends a thrill down my spine every time I hear it:



This version is from Tony Gatlif's Swing, in which a bunch of non-Sinti musicians (as seen in the 'Song of Peace' clip) all join in for a joyous jam session at a Sinti campsite. It's how life isn't, but should be:

Gyppo's video jukebox...

In a feeble attempt to match the technological nous of others, I hereby present an attempt to get a video to play on here. This is the 'Song of Peace' from Tony Gatlif's 2002 film 'Swing'. I particularly recommend the bit at 3' when Gypsies gatecrash an earnest peacenik 'everyone sing together' exercise with some kick-arse swing. Sharing Tony Gatlif's biases, I thoroughly approve:

Film buffery. It's a bloke thing...

A propos of the ongoing film list thing, I recalled today a comment made by a sci-fi nut friend of mine years ago "You have to see it. It's the classic giant ant movie!"
The same sentence with appropriate substitutions could well come from No Good Boyo concerning lesbian vampire films or me about cult comedy films (note that I restrained myself from citing This Is Spinal Tap as being too obvious. I also fought down the urge to include Irma Vep or anything by Tony "look at me I'm a Gyppo" Gatlif, on the grounds that they would be giving away too much information about myself. A deficiency I've just corrected, in the psychological equivalent of shooting myself in the foot. Ah well...)
My daughter's favourite film is Whale Rider, which hits the entertainment needs of her demographic with bulls-eye accuracy.