Guitar
There must be something in the water around Gerwen, Nuenen — the Dutch Sinti community there has given the world Stochelo, Jimmy, and Mozes Rosenberg. Another sturdy branch of that same family tree uses a different last name — Schäfer — but bears equally delicious fruit. Enter, Paulus Schäfer, who last joined us Django in June in 2012. Care for a snippet of that visit? This video was recorded on site by our old friend Patrus and features Simon Planting on bass as well. (Fun fact: Simon taught and performed at the very first edition of Django in June — a one-day event in 2004 featuring Robin Nolan and his brother Kevin.)
That was too long ago, I know, but in our defense, we had Paulus scheduled to rejoin us in 2020. The pandemic nixed that plan. In any case, we’re so happy that he is able to to squeeze us into his busy schedule this year.
Paulus is one of the most talented Gypsy jazz guitarists of our time. The following is taken from this Djangobooks interview of Paulus by Barry Wahrhaftig, translated by Irene Ypenburg.
I was five years old when I started playing the guitar. Stochelo Rosenberg lived at the same camp as me, and he is ten years older than me. We grew up together. Nobody was ever really teaching anybody else. Of course, I learned a lot from him, but he never taught me, [in a formal way]. Wasso was older, Stochelo learned a lot from him, but in the same way. You just played along and now and then they told you to do things slightly different, and that’s how you learned. Of course, when I was little I also asked Wasso Grünholz every now and then how to play something, but nine times out of ten I already had learned it myself and he just helped me improve it a little bit. In such cases it was about a few notes that I did wrong. He showed me a few times and then I heard the difference. That went on until I was thirteen years old and then he told me ‘Now you need to develop your own style’.
Globally, Paulus is in high demand and has performed with many of the best in this particular corner of “the business”: Stochelo Rosenberg, Bireli Lagrene, Jan Akkerman, Antoine Boyer, Martin Taylor and Fapy Lafertin to name but a few. Since 2014 he has performed regularly with virtuoso accordionist Dominique Paats and last year he was counted among The Five Great Guitars which performed in 20 Dutch theaters. On his album “Letter to Vincent Van Gogh”, Paulus was joined by Tcha Limberger and pianist Peter Beets, among others. He and Tcha will be featured on Saturday night’s concert this year.
With two mentions of Stochelo in this portrait, we owe you a video of these two giants of “The Dutch School” casually shredding a classic — “Coquette”.