Following the Melody

Following the Melody

A journey in four movements

List of movements 

1. Following Django 
2. Finding Django in Samois sur Seine
3. The Gift
4. We Won’t Know Until We’ve Played It

Following Django
​

Long before I began following musicians through the cafés and concert halls of Puerto Vallarta, another musician quietly changed the way I traveled.

His name was Django Reinhardt.

Looking back, I realize he taught me something long before I ever met the musicians who now fill these pages. He taught me that music does not exist only on a stage. It has a geography. It lives in cafés, along rivers, in family stories, and in the memories of those who keep listening.

My introduction to Django was wonderfully ordinary. Many years ago, while traveling through the southwest of France with a friend, we stopped at a small family-run restaurant deep in the countryside. As we settled into our seats, recorded music floated through the room. My friend immediately recognized it as Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.

That lunch changed something in me.

Our hosts adored Django. His music seemed to belong there as naturally as the homemade foie gras they proudly served. Even today I cannot separate those warm smiles, that quiet French dining room, and the joyous sound of his guitar.

Curiosity became admiration, and admiration slowly became affection. I began reading everything I could find about the remarkable Romani musician who transformed tragedy into beauty. His story seemed almost impossible.

As a young man, Django suffered devastating burns in a fire that left two fingers of his left hand permanently crippled. Most musicians would have accepted that their career was over. Django simply invented another way to play. Using the two healthy fingers that remained, supported by the damaged ones when he could, he created a style unlike anything the world had ever heard.

His music never sounded limited. If anything, it sounded freer.

That resilience certainly inspired me, but it was not the only reason I was drawn to him. I found myself equally fascinated by the man behind the legend—the boy who wandered the streets of Paris with his banjo or guitar, the devoted family man, the fisherman who loved quiet mornings on the Seine, the painter who nearly abandoned music altogether in search of another form of expression.

The more I learned, the more I wanted to see the places that had shaped him. Not museums or monuments, but the landscapes of an ordinary life.

So I planned a journey through France: Paris, Nice, and finally Samois-sur-Seine, where Django spent his last years.

I tried not to burden the trip with expectations. I simply hoped to walk where he had walked and perhaps understand him a little better.

Only much later did I realize that I wasn’t really following Django.

I was learning how to travel.

Until then I had often visited places because history had happened there. Now I was beginning to understand that history is carried by people. The stories that endure are not found only in churches, castles, or museums. They survive in neighborhood cafés, in family memories, and in the quiet routines of ordinary days.

Years later, when I found myself listening to musicians in Puerto Vallarta, asking about their lives, writing about their music, and eventually becoming friends with many of them, I thought I had discovered something entirely new.

I hadn’t.

Without realizing it, I was still following the path Django had shown me years before.

I have never really traveled in search of concerts.

I travel in search of people whose lives have found expression through music.

I did not know it then, but Django had given me something far more enduring than beautiful music. He had quietly taught me how to listen for the people behind it.


***


Finding Django in Samois-sur-Seine

When I arrived in Samois-sur-Seine, I came with almost no plans.

I knew this quiet village outside Paris had been Django Reinhardt’s last home. I knew he had fished the Seine, painted, played billiards with friends, and lived there with his wife Naguine and their son Babik until his death in 1953.

Beyond that, I expected very little.

One of the dangers of making a pilgrimage is expecting too much. Reality rarely resembles the stories we have created in our imagination, so I decided to arrive with curiosity instead of expectations.

The surprises began before I even reached Samois.

On my first evening in Paris, while searching for jazz performances, one name caught my attention: Simba Baumgartner.

Surely it couldn’t be.

But it was.

Simba is Django Reinhardt’s great-grandson.

My daughter Laura, who had joined me for the first part of the trip, and I crossed the Seine to a small club on the Left Bank where he and his trio were performing. The room was intimate, the audience close enough to feel every note, glasses clinking softly between songs as conversation gave way to music. Much of the evening featured compositions from his new recording. Django’s spirit was unmistakably present, yet Simba’s own voice was equally clear.

Later I learned something that pleased me even more. Simba and his family lived quietly on the outskirts of Samois-sur-Seine in a modest house with a caravan nearby. I smiled at the thought. Django himself had begun married life in a caravan, surrounded by family and friends. The circumstances were different, of course, but the continuity was unmistakable. The music had remained part of everyday life. It had never become a museum piece.

The past had introduced itself before my journey had truly begun.

When I finally reached Samois, the surprises continued.

Walking toward the river on my first afternoon, I noticed a simple plaque on a nearby house.

It was Django’s home.

I hadn’t even begun looking for it.

As I stood there taking it in, a gentleman walking his dog stopped to ask if he could help. We began talking, and when I explained why I had come, he smiled.

He was Raynard, the grandson of Fernand, one of Django’s closest friends.

Within minutes I found myself hearing stories that no guidebook could ever contain.

His family had owned Chez Fernand, the neighborhood café where Django often stopped for tea before heading out to fish or spending an afternoon playing billiards with friends. Although the café had changed hands, the memories remained vivid, lovingly preserved from one generation to the next.

Standing in the rooms where Django had lived, only steps from the Seine, I realized that history is not always preserved in monuments.

Sometimes it survives because families continue telling stories.

The following morning I walked to the village cemetery.

It took some searching before I found Django’s grave, but once I did there was no mistaking it. Members of the Reinhardt family rested together, as so many French families do. Flowers and small tributes surrounded the tomb.

What moved me most, however, were two simple guitar picks resting quietly on the stone.

Someone had left them there.

I had brought nothing to leave behind. For a moment I wished I had.

Then I realized admiration does not always require an object.

Sometimes showing up is enough.

During my stay I had another unexpected encounter. I met the former mayor of Samois-sur-Seine, a man who had devoted years to helping build the annual Django Reinhardt Festival into the remarkable celebration it has become. He had just published a book about the festival’s history and the extraordinary musicians who had gathered there over the years.

When I told him that a musician friend and I hoped someday to organize a small festival in Puerto Vallarta, he seemed genuinely delighted. He opened his book, wrote a warm personal inscription encouraging our efforts, and signed it for me.

Not long afterward, the owner of the little café who had introduced us presented me with another gift—a poster from that year’s Django Festival.

Neither gesture was expected.

Both felt deeply personal.

For years that poster reminded me of the kindness I had found in Samois. Then, when I eventually left Puerto Vallarta, I knew exactly where it belonged. I gave it to a dear musician friend whose love of jazz manouche matched my own. Somehow that seemed fitting. The poster had continued its journey, carrying a small piece of Samois to another corner of the world.

One evening I wandered back toward the river intending only to enjoy a glass of wine at the restaurant that now occupied the site of the old Chez Fernand.

Instead, I stayed for dinner.

A fire glowed in the enormous fireplace. Crystal reflected the warm light. Outside, the Seine moved almost silently past the windows.

The owner recommended a red Burgundy from nearby Beaune and served what remains one of the finest pieces of cod I have ever eaten.

I remember almost nothing of our conversation.

I remember everything about the feeling.

Peace.

As I sat beside the river, I understood that I had not come to meet a legend.

I had come to discover the life that surrounded the legend.

The cafés.

The neighbors.

The family.

The fishermen.

The musicians.

The quiet rhythm of an ordinary village.

When I first planned this journey, I thought I was following the footsteps of one extraordinary guitarist.

Looking back now, I realize I was witnessing something much larger.

I was seeing how beauty survives.

A great-grandson continues to play.

A family preserves old friendships.

A former mayor devotes years to honoring a festival.

A café owner shares its history with strangers.

A traveler from California carries home a book, a poster, and a handful of stories.

None of these people were trying to preserve a monument.

They were simply living generously, passing along something they loved.

Years later, when I found myself writing about musicians in Puerto Vallarta, becoming friends with them, introducing audiences to their music, and telling their stories, I thought I had discovered a new passion.

I hadn’t.

Without realizing it, I was still following the path that had begun beside the Seine.

Django Reinhardt died in 1953.

Yet somehow, in that little village, he was still introducing people to one another.
Perhaps that is how music truly endures—not only through recordings or concerts, but because ordinary people quietly choose to carry it forward.
I like to think that, for a brief moment, I became one small part of that continuing melody.



***



The Gift
Sometimes the greatest gift a piece of writing can receive is not praise but recognition.

When I sent my essay about Django Reinhardt to my friend Alejandro, I thought I was sharing my own memories of Samois-sur-Seine and the remarkable people I had met there. Instead, he quietly handed the story back to me.
He told me I had a gypsy spirit.

Then he remembered.

As a boy, he had discovered a recording of Django Reinhardt and found himself captivated by the music. Years later, he remembered my traveling from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City simply to hear his group perform on the roof of a museum overlooking the Zócalo. I had thought I was the fortunate one, grateful for his music and his friendship. His response reminded me that friendship is rarely one-sided.

When we first met, I sensed something generous in Alejandro’s nature. As we said goodbye that day, he smiled and said, “Let’s not lose track of one another.”

We didn’t.

Over the years our friendship has never depended on favors, recognition, or expectations. It has been sustained by something quieter—a reciprocal regard, a genuine delight in each other’s journeys. Those friendships are rare. They cannot be manufactured. They grow naturally because each person sees something in the other worth preserving.
As I reflected on his message, I realized he was not simply responding to an essay about Django.

He was telling me, “I remember too.”

Perhaps that is one of the truest signs of friendship. Someone receives your story and answers not with applause but with a memory of their own. The conversation becomes larger than either person’s experience. It becomes something shared.
Looking back, I think that has happened many times in my life.

I have often believed I was traveling to hear music.
Perhaps I was really traveling to meet people whose lives would become intertwined with my own.

The music was simply the invitation.



***



We Won’t Know Until We’ve Played It
I have always loved jazz, though I have never been able to explain exactly why.

A jazz musician begins with a familiar melody. We recognize it immediately. Then, almost before we have settled into it, he leaves it behind. For several minutes he wanders through unexpected harmonies and rhythms. If we are impatient, we may wonder whether he has lost his way. But somehow he hasn’t. The melody has never really disappeared. It has simply been living beneath the surface, quietly waiting.

Then, near the end, it returns.

Only now it is no longer the same melody because we are no longer the same listeners.

Recently I came across an interview with the Argentine novelist Andrés Neuman. He was describing the freedom of writing poetry, where, he says, the syntax itself becomes “a living creature in search of something to say.” He writes not to express thoughts he already possesses, but to discover what he thinks and feels while writing.

I stopped reading.
For a moment I simply sat there smiling.

Finally, I thought, someone has described the way my own mind seems to work.

For years I assumed that good writers knew where they were going before they began. They started with an idea and carefully led the reader toward it.

My experience has been almost the opposite.

A piece usually begins with something very small: a gust of wind in Portugal, a cat demanding breakfast, a stranger on a bench, a concert in Berkeley, a cup of coffee in Lisbon. I rarely know why these moments have caught my attention. They simply refuse to let go.

So I begin writing.

Pessoa wanders into the conversation. Then Django Reinhardt. Then perhaps a memory of Provence, or the sound of the ocean, or a remark from one of my children. At times it feels as though I have wandered far away from where I started.

But have I?

Looking back, I don’t think so.

There has always been a melody beneath the improvisation.

Neuman writes that even when planning a novel, he knows the plan will fail. Yet he needs it because the failed plan is what begins the journey. He compares it to travel. We make lists of places we hope to visit, only to discover, almost immediately after arriving, something entirely different that changes the trip forever.

How true that has been in my own life.

I have traveled in search of cities and found people instead.
I have gone looking for Django and discovered lifelong friendships.
I have followed Pessoa through the streets of Lisbon only to discover that I was really following my own questions.
Again and again, the itinerary has quietly given way to something better.

Perhaps writing is no different.

Perhaps travel, music, and writing all ask the same thing of us.
Pay attention.
The jazz musician pays attention to where the melody wishes to go.

The writer pays attention to where the sentence wishes to go.

The traveler pays attention to what was never on the itinerary.

None of them begins with certainty.
They begin with trust.

When I think back over the essays I have written during these past few years, I realize they were never really about cats or coffee, music or travel. Those were simply the opening notes. The meaning revealed itself only after I had stayed with the melody long enough to hear where it wanted to lead me.
Maybe that is why I have always loved jazz.

Not because it is unpredictable, but because it teaches patience.

It reminds us that understanding does not always arrive at the beginning. Sometimes it waits quietly until the final phrase, then suddenly illuminates everything that came before.

Then I remembered a rainy evening in Querétaro.

I had gone well out of my way to hear my friend Caleb and his trio, Media Luna, play in a tiny café in Querétaro. Rain poured down all evening until the power finally went out. No one left. We simply sat together in the darkness, listening as the trio continued to play without amplifiers.
After the performance Caleb thanked me for coming, but then said something I have never forgotten.

“I love that, unlike other fans, you really pay attention to the music—every note, every nuance.”

At the time, I simply took it as a generous compliment.

Years later, reading Andrés Neuman, I realized Caleb had noticed something about me before I had. It wasn’t that I listened to jazz carefully. It was that paying attention was the way I moved through the world.

I imagine…

The musicians have finished playing. 

The audience has gone home. 

The instruments rest in silence.

Someone asks, “So what was the piece about?”
There is a long pause.

Finally, someone smiles.
“We won’t know until we’ve played it.”

The older I become, the more I suspect that is true not only of jazz, but of writing, travel, and perhaps even life itself.
There’s a lovely line by the essayist Montaigne: “I do not portray being. I portray passing.” He wasn’t trying to construct a grand philosophy. He was trying to understand himself as he moved through life.