What Would Django Do?

FANS OF FRENCH guitarist Stephane Wrembel’s series of tribute albums to his idol, Django Reinhardt, have reason to celebrate: Earlier this year, he released a fourth edition of Django-inspired recordings titled — quite conveniently — The Django Experiment IV. This coming January, right on schedule, he’ll release The Django Experiment V. When asked if he considers this latest volume to be the conclusion of the series, Wrembel laughs and says, “Oh, no. The last one will be when I die.”

During his career, Wrembel. But he’s continually come back to his biggest muse as a source of inspiration, and when he says he expects to do “30 or 40 more” Reinhardt-infused records, people should take him at his word. “Django gives me an anchor,” Wrembel says. “I can do other things and put out different records, but every year I can come back to Django. It’s a cyclical thing, and there’s something almost transcendental about it; I don’t even think about what I’m doing. There’s no reason this can’t go on and on.”