After the weekend's jam session, which ended up mutating from bluegrass to gypsy swing to jazz, I ordered a CD from Amazon of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli, to remind me what I should be aspiring to on this front. It's such amazing music and reminds me of when I first got to know their stuff via an old LP in my childhood home. It's the kind of things that classical musicans (such as I was then) like to play when they branch out because it appeals both on a level of musical intricacy and on the showmanship - look what I can get my fingers round. High energy, that amazing soulful gypsy sound and the evocation of a more decadent yet playful party age. And of course, both Django's Paris jazz and old-time bluegrass and country have roots in the ragtime of the South, Scott Joplin, the delta blues and all that stuff, as our jam mutation showed. Old bluegrass irresistibly melds it with the Celtic dances and fiddle tunes, and of course French/Cajun influences rather than the European gypsy/klezmer-ish sounds of the Hot Club de Paris.