This was an early jazz acquisition. It was just one of those moments where I knew I wanted to check out Django Reindhart and hey presto there was a CD in the freebie bin at work. I suppose I could be forgiven for think it was a greatest hits package, seeing that it doesn't take much to turn the title into "Django Anthology", but Djangology is actually a proper album, all tracks from the same recording session (23 of the 50 recordings are collected here). Just to confuse matters further, there are plenty of other compilations flying around with the same title comprised of far earlier recordings. This album, however, was not released until 2005.
1949 is pretty late in the Django Reinhardt story and these sessions represent the last recordings with his usual partner in crime Stephane Grappelli (who is virtually a co-titular performer here). Even though the best of their material dates back to the 1930's pre-war era, there was still a lot of demand for his music in Europe in the postwar era, so these sessions addressed that thirst.
While Django died just a few years after these sessions, Grappelli would forge ahead all the way into the 1990's and set the gold standard for a new generation of jazz violinists (Jean-Luc Ponty, Jerry Goodman, and others), many involved in the avant-garde and fusion scenes.
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