On the weekend of March 20, the Carrboro Django Reinhardt Festival returns for its fifth edition, bringing acoustic jazz, communal jam sessions, and a rare slice of European musical culture to local venues.
Founded in 2016 by local musician Gabriel Pelli, the festival survived a pandemic hiatus and several years of lost momentum before springing back to life last year, when every concert and workshop sold out and the Sunday jam ran for seven straight hours.
For Pelli, staging the festival is a side gig—albeit a consuming one.
“It is basically a one-man show,” Pelli said. “I’m the founder, director, creative director. I do get help along the way, for sure. But I didn’t revive it until last year. I just ran out of steam.”
Running even a modest festival is no small task: booking artists, coordinating international flights, signing contracts, managing ticketing platforms, handling marketing, scheduling workshops, negotiating venue splits, and balancing guest lists against a tight budget. Pelli does it between rehearsals, teaching, and the rest of life.
Growing up, Pelli didn’t play this kind of music—he didn’t know it existed.
“It all started with a friend of mine, Wells Gordon,” he said. “He wanted to put together a hot-club-style band and needed a violinist. Any warm body that could play violin.”
At the time, Pelli played only classical violin and had yet to hear of Django Reinhardt. Gordon sent him recordings.
“I loved it right away,” Pelli said. “He told me I could just sight-read the melodies. I’d play the melody at the beginning of the tune, the guitarist would take the solos, and then I’d come back at the end. That’s how I started.”
From there, curiosity turned into obsession. He began experimenting with improvisation on violin, then later picked up guitar to better understand the language of the style. What started as filling a seat in a band slowly reshaped his musical life.
The festival itself came nearly a decade into that journey. The first edition was sparked by a French guitarist named Stéphane Wrembel, who grew up near the town where Django Reinhardt lived. When Pelli saw he was touring nearby, he reached out cold.
“I just wanted him to come here so I could hear him,” Pelli said. “I told him I’d set up the show and promote it.”
Wrembel agreed but suggested they call it the Django Reinhardt Festival and add a workshop. That first year was straightforward: one afternoon workshop and an evening concert.
The festival is devoted to Reinhardt, the Belgian-born Romani guitarist who reshaped jazz in the 1930s with a radically inventive approach. Born into a traveling Romani family that moved throughout western Europe, Reinhardt eventually settled on the outskirts of Paris. After a caravan fire severely damaged his left hand, doctors recommended amputation. He refused.
With limited use of two fingers, he rebuilt his technique.
“He had these two fingers for lead melodies,” Pelli said, describing Reinhardt’s approach, “and the others mainly for chords. When you try to play one of his licks, you realize it actually works best with two fingers—because that’s how he had to do it.”
Often labeled gypsy jazz—also known as jazz Manouche, Sinti jazz, hot club jazz, or Django-style jazz—the musical style blends American swing with European waltzes and Romani traditions. While the terminology carries cultural nuance, the style has endured most vibrantly within Western European Sinti communities, where it functions as living folk music, learned young and passed down socially across generations.
“It’s really become their folk music,” Pelli said, referring to communities in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. “There’s no better way to get really good than to be surrounded by other good players and to play all the time.”
That communal ethic anchors the Carrboro festival. Alongside ticketed concerts and workshops, Sunday’s free jam session at Lapin Bleu in Chapel Hill serves as the weekend’s gravitational center. Musicians rotate in and out. At one point at a past festival, Pelli found himself trading choruses with Reinhardt’s great-grandson.
“It was surreal,” he said. “You realize you’re inside a lineage.”
This year’s lineup leans into that living tradition. Dutch guitarist Paulus Schäfer headlines the weekend, traveling from the Netherlands for two nights at Cat’s Cradle Back Room. Schäfer grew up immersed in the Sinti jazz scene and is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary voices in the style.
He’s joined by Baltimore guitarist Sam Farthing, 24, whose playing has drawn high praise from aficionados.
“Even if you can’t afford a workshop or a concert, you can come by for free and listen to the jam. Anybody can participate in the festival in some way.”
Gabriel Pelli, founder, the carrboro django reinhardt festival
“He plays like he grew up in a Sinti camp in Holland,” Pelli said. “Which is about the highest compliment you can give.”
Concerts run Friday and Saturday nights, March 20–21, with daytime workshops focused on rhythm technique, improvisation, and ensemble interplay. Sunday’s March 22 jam is free and informal, no ticket required.
“Even if you can’t afford a workshop or a concert, you can come by for free and listen to the jam,” Pelli said. “Anybody can participate in the festival in some way.”
Carrboro isn’t an obvious stop for European touring musicians. Most cluster in New York, Chicago, or the Bay Area. That this music lands here at all is a testament to Pelli’s persistence.
“Django started something almost a hundred years ago,” Pelli said. “Every time we play it together, we’re keeping that conversation alive.”
For a few nights in March, Carrboro joins that conversation.
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