Documenting jazz manouche: understanding the posthumous influence of Django Reinhardt and the ongoing interpretation and codification of his music through community and performance online.

As a hybridised musical form - fusing elements of 'gypsy' or manouche music, musette and jazz - jazz manouche has evolved out of the legacy of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, as part of the cultural identity of manouche Gypsy communities in Western Europe and has had an immeasurable influence on a growing coterie of guitar enthusiasts globally. Today the music has become a codified form of jazz in its own right and the Internet media-sharing platform YouTube has been instrumental in the documentation and dissemination of the genre’s performance practices. This paper investigates how we understand the jazz manouche community online and examines the construction of a fan driven YouTube archive and its impact on the codification of the contemporary jazz manouche style today.