I recently received a CD/DVD set from well-known Gypsy Jazz aficionado Scot Wise; as so often happens when I get mail from Scot, it was rare and enchanting music, played by people I hadn’t heard of before. And–also as usual–I was impressed.

The discs featured the often overlooked compositions of Francis Alfred Moerman, as played by father and son duo Sebastian and Antoine Boyer.  Great fans of Moerman’s music, the pair tracked down the aging giant at his 17th century farmhouse, where the recording project took shape, eventually growing to include a half-hour documentary about the process that is at once touching, enlightening, and full of a pulsing life too often missing in more derivative records. It isn’t necessarily the virtuosity that makes the difference–though even at 11 years old, Antoine is well on his way to that–but the sensitivity with which father and son approach their icon’s work.

Within the jazz community, Moerman is certainly a less recognizable name than Reinhardt, and most of the tunes on display were unfamiliar to me. But almost immediately, I was struck by the inventiveness of Moerman’s compositions; they seemed in many ways to bridge old Musette traditions and more modern jazz innovations in ways I hadn’t heard before.

But even without the music, the movie would be a wonderful look at some of our last links to the earlier generations–Moerman talking about a semi-retired Matelot Ferret playing on park benches for unsuspecting tourists, Alain Antonietto lamenting the “Djangomania” that has given rise to a narrow-minded focus on technical prowess. When young Antoine picks up the Busato on which Django is supposed to have written Anouman, it’s with a real sense of history.

The CD/DVD combo is currently available at Djangobooks.com: Antoine Boyer – L’univers Isolite de Francis Moerman CD and DVD