Angelo Debarre was born on August 19, 1962 in Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, into the Manouche community, the French branch of the Romani people, and he is one of the leading guitarists of the style that grew from Django Reinhardt. He took up the guitar at eight. His endorser biography says he learned the way Manouche players traditionally do, by ear and by watching at family gatherings, and English Wikipedia, citing Scott Yanow's guide to jazz guitarists, gives the same starting age. He is 64 now and still records: Discogs lists new releases for 2025 and 2026.

In 1984 he formed the Angelo Debarre Quintet, his first group. From 1985 to 1987 he played regularly at La Roue Fleurie, a Paris meeting place for Manouche musicians run by the guitarist Serge Camps, who also introduced him to the Eastern European Romani repertoire. Another regular there, the Norwegian guitarist and producer Jon Larsen, brought Debarre, Camps and the double bassist Frank Anastasio into the studio. The result was Gypsy Guitars (Hot Club Records, 1989), recorded at La Roue Fleurie, which Larsen later described as a reference record for the genre and a spark for the revival of Django-style music in France.

Larsen's Hot Club de Norvège kept Debarre in its orbit through the 1990s. La Roue Fleurie (Hot Club Records, 1992) is billed to the Norwegian group featuring him, with his guitar on four of its eleven tracks, and he was a special guest on the group's Parisian Honeymoon Suite (2001) beside Jimmy Rosenberg, Babik Reinhardt and Romane. In 1998 came Caprice (Hot Club Records), which his Savarez biography calls his first album as bandleader: recorded at Sysmo Studio in Paris with the violinist Florin Niculescu, the guitarists Philippe "Doudou" Cuillerier and Max Robin, the pianist Bojan Zulfikarpašić, the bassist Bernard Malandain and the percussionist Xavier Desandre Navarre, it found critical favor on both sides of the Atlantic, according to that biography. The same year he joined Rosenberg and Biréli Lagrène on Jimmy, Bireli & Angelo (Hot Club Records), a three-guitar record billed to Rosenberg with the other two as featured guests.

The next decade belongs to the French label Le Chant du Monde. With the accordionist Ludovic Beier he made a run of duo and small-group records: Swing Rencontre (2002, first issued by Marianne Mélodie), Come Into My Swing! (2003), Entre amis (2005, whose title track is his own composition), Entre ciel et terre (2006) and Paroles de swing (2007). Mémoires (2004), a homage to Django Reinhardt, has him and the guitarist Tchavolo Schmitt sharing the lead guitar parts; Trio tout à cordes (2008) is a trio with the rhythm guitarist Tchavolo Hassan and the bassist Antonio Licusati, and Gipsy Unity (2009) adds the violinist Marius Apostol to that group. He has played the annual Django Reinhardt festival at Birdland in New York, among others in 2002. A quartet with the violinist Chris Garrick and the guitarist Dave Kelbie recorded Impromptu (made in 2002 and issued in 2004) and Live at Le Quecumbar London (2007) on the Lejazzetal label. In December 2009 he toured South America, with festival dates in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Córdoba and a first concert in Rosario, in a trio with Hassan and Beier. For Django Reinhardt's centenary he joined Boulou and Elios Ferré and Romane for the album Django 100 (JMS).

Outside the jazz clubs he reached a wider audience in French film and song. In Joann Sfar's Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) (2010) he plays a Manouche guitar teacher giving lessons to the young Serge Gainsbourg, he played "Le poinçonneur des Lilas" on Lulu Gainsbourg's 2011 album From Gainsbourg to Lulu, and he appears on Thomas Dutronc's Éternels jusqu'à demain (2015). He is one of four protagonists in Bruno Le Jean's documentary Les Fils du vent (2012) and the subject of Bruno Carrière's Angelo Debarre et les luthiers swing (2014).

His recent records pair him with players from several generations. Complicité (Just Looking Productions, 2013) is credited to Gipsy Unity, Angelo Debarre and Marius Apostol; the violinist Aurore Voilqué featured him on La Valse bohémienne (2018) and Un soir d'été (2020); and Gypsy Guitars 2 (Label Ouest, April 2025) reunited him with Camps and Anastasio thirty-six years after the first record, mixing Romani pieces such as a Hungarian and a Romanian suite with swing standards and his own waltz "La Manouche." Jazz Journal reviewed it in July 2025. In 2026 he made Django Celebration #03 with the guitarist Adrien Moignard and the bassist William Brunard, released on August 28 on Label Ouest, and a Paris concert by the trio was listed for October 17, 2026.

He also teaches through print and video. Astuces de la guitare manouche, a two-volume book and CD set made with Samy Daussat and Denis Roux, and the video series In the Style of Angelo Debarre from Denis Chang's DC-Music School carry his playing into the lessons, and he has been an instructor at the Django in June camp in the United States, where Brunard has often played with him alongside his son Raangy on rhythm guitar. Raangy also plays rhythm guitar on one track of Entre ciel et terre (2006).

Debarre works inside the Manouche guitar tradition of Django Reinhardt, usually as the lead guitarist over rhythm guitars and a double bass, with a violin or accordion as the second melody voice. In a 2009 interview with the Argentine paper Página/12 he said he would rather call the music "swing" than Manouche jazz, since Django was a swing-era player, and he described himself as one of the representatives of Django's music. In the same interview he named Paco de Lucía, Charlie Christian, René Thomas, Tchan Tchou Vidal, Patote Bousquet and Oscar Alemán among his references.

His repertoire has three layers. There are Reinhardt's own pieces and American standards such as "There Will Never Be Another You" and "What Is This Thing Called Love"; there is the Eastern European Romani material he learned through Camps, including the suites arranged for Gypsy Guitars 2; and there are his own compositions, among them "Inquiétude," "Swing chez Toto," "Coeur de bois" and "Romano Baschepen." AllMusic files him under Gypsy jazz and guitar jazz.