In 2017, I was at the Galax Old Time Fiddlers Convention in West Virginia, a dream long held and finally realised. I fell in with the folk at Swingtown, the biggest marquee on the site. One day, while talking with a friend camped adjacent, I heard a chromatic harmonica playing swing tunes with a distinctive virtuosity. It just had to be … I went next door, and sure enough it was. David Naiditch. I’d known David online for some years and had a few of his CDs. I wrote some nice words about one of them on the harp-l forum many years back, a ruse which had David send me all subsequent recordings, including his latest. We’ll get to that. David studied mathematics at UCLA, then philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, and was for many years a software engineer at The Aerospace Corporation. He has published two books on the Ada programming language. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, David has found much time for his music.
DAVID NAIDITCH Tony Eyres
He started as a diatonic player in the 1960s, tutored by Sonny Terry, then moved to chromatic. He often plays with just one hand, a skill he gained (according to our discussions) as he practised while commuting, his other hand presumably on the steering wheel. This one-handed habit can be disconcerting, as he appears to be without instruments, until his right hand emerges from his pocket, followed by chromatic playing at the highest level. David has adopted two distinct music genres: swing (in particular, acoustic gypsy jazz) and bluegrass instrumentals. I inhabit this latter genre and have been lucky enough to share tunes with him, at Galax, then at SPAH. This included a roaring version of Jerusalem Ridge, played for Lars Seifert, the president of Seydel Harmonicas. A grand moment. Bluegrass and gypsy jazz have strong jamming cultures, very different to blues jams, where an evening generally comprises a short set on stage, followed by long breaks while others play. Bluegrass and gypsy jazz comes alive at festivals, where players gather, not so much to hear performances, but to play all day (and all night) with their peers. I’m familiar with bluegrass festivals – the jamming session quality is often astoundingly good. David has attended these festivals for decades. The result has been twofold: a formidable technique and repertoire, and long-standing musical associations with the best players.
