Les Journaux

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Posted on: Sunday, March 28, 2010
Gypsy jazz still swings in Hulaville
Storied old guitar brings special kind of luck to Honolulu's Silva

By Mike Gordon Advertiser Staff Writer
Of all the sounds his guitar could make, the last one Sonny Silva wanted to hear was the crack of splintering wood. Everyone within earshot knew what had just happened. They couldn't bear to look.

It was late, 2:30 on a Sunday morning in January at Atherton Studio. Silva's gypsy jazz quartet — Hot Club of Hulaville — was packing up after a gig, and Silva didn't realize he had forgotten to zip shut his canvas gig bag when he slung it over his shoulder.
The guitar flew from the case and landed hard.
"It shattered the face of it," Silva said. "It broke my heart."
But the fates smiled on Silva, a 57-year-old Honolulu musician. What happened next was a blend of serendipity and social networking. It's a tale of respect, admiration and a pair of vintage guitars. Within days, Silva was holding an instrument he could not have fathomed ever playing, let alone owning: The beloved guitar of Dorado Schmitt, a French gypsy long considered to be one of the greatest living gypsy jazz performers in the world.
"It doesn't look like much," Silva said. "It has been around a lot of campfires. It has probably been in a few fights. It has gouges and repairs. It looks like hell, but the business end of it plays perfect."
When Silva's fingers slide across its steel strings, the guitar, a 1953 Castelluccia, produces music far different than the type of jazz he has played most of his life.
"It has enough of the bark, the classic gypsy sound," he said. "It is not the warm, mellow sound we try to get with classical guitars; it has a meaner sound. Yet when you play it, it is capable of having all kinds of color."
MANOUCHE JAZZ
Gypsy jazz, which is also called manouche jazz because its origins are in France, is a variety of swing music that first became popular in the 1930s and '40s. It's been said that manouche jazz has the elegance of classical music, the fire of gypsy music, elements of jazz swing and the energy of rock 'n' roll.
Its most recognizable master is Django Reinhardt, a Belgian who grew up in gypsy camps outside Paris. Although Reinhardt died in 1953, he remains a celebrated icon whose legacy is marked by music festivals around the world, so good that even American jazz greats wanted to duplicate his sound. Photos by Rebecca Breyer courtesy Honolulu Advertiser
"He had singlehandedly redefined where guitar was going," Silva said. "He was a rock star of his era."
Django played a gypsy guitar with peculiar features, all of which can be found on Schmitt's old guitar. The bodies of these guitars were shaped like modern electric guitars, which allowed performers more room at the bottom of the neck so they could hit high notes.
The guitars were loud, too, largely due to the fact that the gypsies in that era played in noisy dance halls and needed instruments that could be heard. That required a fierce playing style, Silva said, "a heavy attack."
"You had to play the hell out of it," he said. "You had to be physically strong and have a lot of endurance."
And because they were not concert guitars — because in less skilled hands, they could only produce a quick, hard note — they were relatively cheap. Such was the guitar that Schmitt owned. "It was his old standby, the one he played most of his concerts with," Silva said. "He had this guitar in his possession for 30 years, and I can't believe he wanted to part with it."
FINDING A 'SOULMATE'
Duane Padilla, who plays a 200-year-old violin in Silva's Hot Club of Hulaville, likens his instruments to children. The 35-year-old violin teacher said he hasn't found a violin that would make him part with any in his collection — and so Schmitt's decision to part with his guitar astounds him.
"It's a big deal," Padilla said. "But when a really special instrument comes along, the one that really speaks to you — your soulmate — certain sacrifices have to be made."
On the other side of the country, at a music store in New York City, the 52-year-old Schmitt experienced such a moment, just three days after Silva broke his guitar.
Schmitt was in New York on a concert tour marking the centennial of Reinhardt's birth when he walked into Rudy's Music, which features one of the largest collection of vintage guitars in the world. With him was Ted Gottsegen, a 38-year-old musician whom Schmitt considers a son.
Inside Rudy's, Schmitt saw a 1969 Gibson Super 400, and it was love at first sight, Gottsegen said. "His eyes popped out of his head," Gottsegen said. "He looked at me and said, 'That's my dream guitar.' " Schmitt gave it a try, and everyone in the music store stopped what they were doing to listen. The Gibson cost $10,000. To pay for it, Schmitt arranged to give the store a pair of electric guitars he brought for his tour and whatever he could raise by selling his old acoustic, the 1953 Castelluccia.
It was measure of how hard Schmitt had fallen. The Castelluccia was famous among those who love gypsy jazz, Gottsegen said. It is to manouche what B.B. King's "Lucille" is to the blues and Willie Nelson's "Trigger" is to country.
"Gypsies tend to not really get attached to guitars that much, unless it is a family heirloom, or it was bequeathed from another musician," he said. "This was a guitar that was very close to him. I have played it many times. The sound is incredible."Gottsegen posted an ad on his Facebook page that same day, and word got to Silva through a mutual friend — once again, via Facebook and e-mail. The guitar could be his for $2,500. Silva said yes.
But Schmitt was still several thousand short, and the deal fell through at Rudy's. Schmitt went to the tour's final show, sad and disappointed, Gottsegen said.
That wasn't the end of the story, though. One of Rudy's employees, impressed by Schmitt's immediate mastery of the big, heavy Gibson, convinced store owner Rudy Pensa to watch the gypsy's final show. Pensa often deals with collectors who think nothing of spending $10,000 for an instrument they can't even play, Gottsegen said. In Schmitt, Pensa saw the real thing. "Rudy, first and foremost, is a guitar lover," Gottsegen said. "He was moved. He said, 'You have to have that guitar.' "Gottsegen delivered the Gibson to Schmitt the next day, and the gypsy wept.
"He was almost afraid to touch it," Gottsegen said. "He just sat there and stared at it. Then tears came to his eyes. That's how much it meant."
And the Castelluccia now belonged to Silva.
A TRANSFORMATION
The gypsy's old guitar arrived in Honolulu with a note from Schmitt. The guitar had brought Schmitt luck for 30 years, and now he hoped it would do the same for Silva, who has been playing guitar since he was a boy in Waikīkī. At first, the guitar made Silva nervous, so he sent a note to Schmitt.
"I said I may not be worthy of this," Silva said. "If you want it back, let me know. "But Silva's friends say the old guitar is changing the way Silva plays. After decades with Schmitt, the guitar's wooden skin is accustomed to vibrating in certain ways, and now it seems to be guiding Silva's hands. The more he plays it, the better he plays, Silva said. He calls the change "profound."
"I have to play it every day," he said. "It is very alluring. It is a very easy guitar to play. It has all kinds of gypsy ju-ju."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Posted on: Friday, August 29, 2008
Hot Club of Hulaville sizzles with gypsy sounds

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
HOT CLUB OF HULAVILLE

Go early and feast — with crepes, fromage and vino — at a GypsyFest party on Saturday at the Pavilion Café at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Then toast the Hot Club of Hulaville, Honolulu's newest darlings of gypsy music, which will be in concert downstairs at the Doris Duke Theatre.
Gypsy what?
Essentially, it's a French twist to American swing, said group leader Sonny Silva, a guitarist, who did a gig at Hawai'i Public Radio and discovered "an unexpected thing. ... People really liked our music, which started as a lark."
But he added: "I was on my way doing Portuguese samba music."
The detour to gypsy music, which encompasses jazz, swing and classical genres, has roots in the French inspiration and artistry of Django Reinhardt's music and his Quintette du Hot Club de France, the ooh-la-la rage in the City of Light (Paris) in the 1930s.
We posed Five Questions to Silva, to shed further light on gypsydom:
Q. What constitutes "gypsy music," and how does it fit into the Island scene?
A. What we play, and what Hot Club bands play, reflects the Great American Songbook; it's (George) Gershwin stylized, with gypsy instrumentation, with guitar, accordion, violin ... and an easy classical tradition. The Hot Club bands — there are others elsewhere — are well-schooled, not street musicians, and its all quite seminal: Hot Club bands became responsible for American be-bop, rock, a lot of different music. Personally, gypsy music includes American jazz, cafe tango, with great instrumentation.
Q. Have you visited the City of Light, where gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt made his mark, and does the gypsy vibe still prevail?
A. Yes, I have. The gypsy vibe is all over the place. Cannes. Italy was actually where I first saw and heard it. There are festivals in Spain and Vienna, too.
Q. What's with the name?
A. Our original band was the Hot Club of Kaka'ako, so Hot Club of Hulaville is much better. We're influenced by the original Quintet du Hot Club of France. We play jazz and hapa-haole Hawaiian music like "Sophisticated Hula," "Keep Your Eyes on the Hands," with some gypsy pump. Hot Clubs are all over the country, in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit.
Q. How did you assemble your Hulaville gang, and get them on the same page?
A. Pierre Grill (accordion and piano) was right on it; he's from the Marseilles area of France; he can play anything. Duane Padilla (violinist) was playing with me a lot. We found our bass player (David Chiorini), who could put the sound together, through John Kolivas (of the Honolulu Jazz Quartet). And Willow Chang (vocalist) was a perfect fit — she's like Edith Piaf, the little sparrow.
Q. Besides a thirst to listen and party, what should the audience bring to the fest?
A. We're very stylized; we dress in the period, in '30s gear, so I'm dressed elegantly and dapper, kinda like ... a French pimp (laughs). Folks should think gypsy — and come in high style, like Busby Berkeley, you know, "We're in the Money" and "Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?" Yeah, wear costumes; a French boatman, high fashion stuff. We're very high art, and we'll try to create a mood with backdrops to add to the ambience. Ultimately, though, it's all about the music — and the mood. Oh, yeah, we'll have gypsies, too.
Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Band’s Hulaville hits isles with tango and Django
By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com
Hot clubs, naturally, are where the cool cats hang out. The phrase has come to signify the syncopated "international" jazz that leaped across the Atlantic in the early '20s -- thanks to black soldiers in the Great War -- and began a funky tango with gypsy and bohemian musical influences in European cabaret. Or we can boil it down to one word -- Django
"Every guitar player, at some point, gets into Django Reinhardt," says Sonny Silva, who began his guitar studies with slack-key master Sonny Chillingworth. "I've always had a fascination with his approach, his scales, his passion, his inventiveness on the instrument. He's not smooth, but he's brilliant."
The Parisian gypsy guitarist formed the seminal jazz group Quintette du Hot Club de France in the early '30s -- "Named after the actual club they played in!" Silva said -- and pretty much invented the notion of "lead" guitar, which to that point was mostly used with a band's rhythm section.
The phrase "hot club" has since become the secret handshake for le jazz hot enthusiasts around the world. It seem every major city has their own edition, and Silva's is Hot Club of Hulaville, which is playing at Doris Duke Theatre this weekend.
"Our violinist is Duane Padilla, who's with the symphony. We were jamming together years ago and said, let's play some hot-club!" Silva said. "Then we picked up Pierre Grill on accordion and piano -- you probably know him from his recording studio, but he's one of the best piano players in the state. He's actually French, too. And there's David Chiorini on concert bass, another symphony guy. Those concert basses, what a sound!”...
If ticket sales are any indication, the band is thriving: Every show they've performed has sold out.
"Pierre tells me we're becoming more popular," Silva concurred. "The timing is right. Dial in 'hot club' on the Google and you'll find bands everywhere. It's not just jazz. It's not just gypsy. We do have a lot of tunes from the great American song list.
"And tango. Lots of tango!"

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