The Great Instagram Jazz Guitar Plagiarism Scandal

In one video, the guitarist looks like he bought all his clothes from Instagram ads: rust-colored slacks, camp shirt with vaguely tropical pattern, backwards dad cap. The smartphone-vertical frame pans languidly across the group of musicians that surround him, all outfitted similarly in millennial leisure wear. They’re bopping, smiling, having a great time playing an instrumental version of a Stevie Wonder song. Even the guitar, a dusky blue Telecaster lookalike with a raspberry-red pickguard, is moodboard-ready. You could imagine it hanging on the wall in a boutique hotel in L.A. or Austin or Nashville, the kind of place with a killer mezcal margarita named after a dead songwriter at the lobby bar. The guy playing it might look like a startup sales bro at happy hour, but you’ve gotta admit: He’s fucking shredding.

In the other video, the guitarist looks… not unfashionable or anything, just more like you might expect a guy who uploads YouTube videos of himself shredding to look: dark jeans, black T-shirt, long hair pulled tightly back. He’s playing a semi-hollow Yamaha, classy-looking in a muted sort of way. It’s hard to imagine he chose the outfit or the guitar for the way they would pop on camera. The lighting is dim, the focus is a little blurry. The frame is horizontal, even though it was uploaded to YouTube’s vertically oriented Shorts section, so much of the screen space is taken up by letterboxing. This guy’s presentation may be humbler, but he, too, is fucking shredding. Shredding to the same Stevie Wonder song, in fact, though he’s labeled the video with the artist name of a British acid-jazz group who once covered it. Another less-than-savvy choice, perhaps: There are surely lots more people searching for Stevie Wonder guitar videos than Incognito ones. 

Upon closer examination, these two guys aren’t just playing along to the same song. They’re playing exactly the same solo: the same staccato chordal stab that opens it, the same call-and-response licks that follow that, even the same little self-satisfied nod and smile during a particularly sassy bend in the middle. Marco Baldi, an Italian jazz guitarist with about 5,000 Instagram followers, uploaded his version in 2022. Giacomo Turra, an Italian jazz guitarist with about 725,000, uploaded his a year later.