Hotting It Up at Henry Ward Hall
VICTORIA KINGHAM
The name of the Hot Club de France is well known to most jazz lovers. It’s associated with such quintessential geniuses as Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli, whose regular Quintette du Hot Club de France invented the style that has now come to be known as gypsy jazz. It’s a very recognisable sound, which probably accounts for its continuing wide popularity. Frequently new music that sounds off the wall when first heard, later becomes a familiar, sometimes reassuring, cultural reference point.
Having begun in America as something sometimes considered scandalous and promiscuous, jazz grew in popularity globally, changing and developing in style. The 1930s was a key decade for its popular dissemination: the Hot Club de France flourished as an organisation dedicated to what we would now call ‘traditional’ jazz, and included or defined jazz musicians on the basis of their musical ‘authenticity’.
During World War II The Hot Club was actively subversive – while the Nazis regarded jazz (and a lot of other music) as degenerate, the Club was able to maintain a presence by listing the music with literal translations – so, for example, the street-inspired Saint Louis Blues became ‘La Tristesse de St Louis’, lending a saint a Christian-sounding sadness, which somehow maintained Nazi approval. At around that time, the club’s premises became a location for Resistance activities and for the exchange of coded information, until 1943 when its founders were arrested and imprisoned, one (Madeleine Germaine) was later killed in a German gas chamber. The Club disbanded as an organisation some time in the 1980s; its impact, however, remains far reaching.
HOT CLUB HASTINGS ALIVE AND WELL
There’s a great deal more history surrounding this notable and influential organisation. However, the musical style of Django Reinhardt’s Quintette probably remains its most enduring, best-known and best-imitated souvenir. Here in Hastings we have our own Quintette, led by Benoît Viéllefon, dedicated to its continuing appeal.
Viéllefon himself specialises in 1920s, 30s and 40s music. He has been a regular at Ronnie Scott’s Upstairs and the band has also appeared in Hollywood films, TV and radio productions, and on the jazz stage at Glastonbury. He has occasionally performed in front of VIPs like Madonna, or the late Queen. The band’s performances celebrate the excitement generated by the 1930s gypsy bands, but also the romanticism of some of the finest French numbers. This line up will feature the guitars of Viéllefon and Jarrod Elks (also vocals), Jack Garside on double bass, Magic Mike Henry on cornet and trumpet, and Bjorn Dhalberg on clarinet and tenor sax.
Benoît has been resident in St Leonards since 2017 and his partner Yuka runs a café in St Leonards, Arigato. The concert will take place in the Henry Ward Hall, that has a mission to provide a safe space for Hastings residents and visitors through music, theatre and other community events, and has some of the best acoustics in the UK. Some of the profits will go to His Place, the attached church, café, and community hub in Robertson Street.
Viéllefon says “although I play some Django and gypsy classics, I play a lot of American standards, French chanson, Napolitan music, Eastern European folk and Latin music. It’s like listening to world radio in the ‘30s and ‘40s!” He tells us that the audience sometimes sings along. This is certain to be a feel-good concert, to be enjoyed by the whole family.
Concert: 31 May 2025 at Henry Ward Hall. Tickets: benoit-viellefon-live.designmynight.com Information: benoitviellefon.com
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