The Case of the Dueling Djangos

I once told a friend that I was going to interview Django Reinhardt. “Shut up!” she shouted, astonished. It took me a moment to realize why. Django Reinhardt died in 1953. In fact, I was going to interview Django Haskins, who was named after Reinhardt but is not him.

I’m sure this happens all the time. To make it worse, both Djangos appear on local club schedules next week, threatening to sow mass confusion. Let’s clear this up once and for all:

Django Reinhardt is the Romani-French jazz guitarist from Belgium who founded the musical tradition still known as “gypsy jazz,” even though that’s a pejorative term. But that’s no knock on Reinhardt, who, for the third year running, is the subject of the Carrboro Django Reinhardt Festival, which comes to the Cat’s Cradle Back Room January 17–19. With nightly concerts by the likes of Onyx Club Boys and Ultrafaux with Jason Anick, the festival also includes separately ticketed music workshops and a free documentary screening at The Station.

Meanwhile, Django Haskins is the living songwriter and musician best known as the bandleader of The Old Ceremony, a Chapel Hill-bred folk, jazz, and rock band replete with period film references and other cultured oddities. As he prepares to release a new solo album this year, following 2018’s Shadowlawn, he’s trying out some new material at The Pinhook on Thursday, January 16, with openers Sun Studies and Anne-Claire.

Furthermore, Django Unchained is a controversial Quentin Tarantino film from 2012. Django is a “high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.” And Rango is a movie where Johnny Depp portrays a lizard who becomes the mayor of a town in the Mojave Desert.