Boulou and Elios Ferré are two French guitarists, brothers, who have recorded and toured as a duo since the late 1970s and are among the best-known modern players of the manouche tradition, the guitar style that grew out of Django Reinhardt's music. Boulou was born Jean-Jacques Ferret in Paris on April 24, 1951, and Elios on December 18, 1956. Their father was the guitarist Matelo Ferret, who with his brother Baro Ferret played with Reinhardt in the Quintette du Hot Club de France; a third brother, Sarane Ferret, was also a guitarist, and the two uncles helped start the boys on guitar and Romani song from an early age. When the two formed their duo in 1978 they billed themselves as Ferré rather than Ferret, and that is the name on every record they have made together.

Boulou was the prodigy. He gave his first concert at eight and recorded his first album at twelve, for Barclay in 1964. In 1962 he had entered the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied piano, classical guitar and organ, and he took classes with Olivier Messiaen, whose teaching left him with a lasting interest in counterpoint and the music of J. S. Bach. He appeared at the Jazz à Juan festival in Antibes on a bill with John Coltrane and in 1966 recorded Boulou et les Paris All Stars with the bassist Michel Gaudry, the pianist Maurice Vander and the organist Eddy Louiss. In 1969 he gave a series of recitals at the Chat qui pêche in Paris with Dexter Gordon, the bassist Patrice Caratini and Philly Joe Jones. Through the 1970s he recorded or played with Chet Baker, Steve Lacy, Kenny Clarke, Warne Marsh, Svend Asmussen and Louis Vola, made Espace (1970) with the German vibraphonist Gunter Hampel, and was a member of the free-jazz group Emergency with the pianist Takashi Kako and the drummer Yoshisaburo Toyozumi, whose album Homage to Peace appeared in 1973. In 1974 he formed the Corporation Gypsy Orchestra with Kako, the saxophonist Steve Potts and Christian Escoudé, and in 1985 he joined Escoudé and Babik Reinhardt, Django's son, for the three-guitar record Three of a Kind and the Trio Gitan.

The brothers' first record as a duo, Pour Django, came out on the Danish label SteepleChase in 1979, and the Copenhagen label became their home for the next two decades. Gypsy Dreams was recorded on June 8 and 9, 1980, and Trinity on November 18, 1982, with the Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Relax and Enjoy was recorded in Copenhagen on April 29, 1985 with the bassist Jesper Lundgaard and the drummer Ed Thigpen, and the same rhythm section joined them for a live set at the Jazzhus Slukefter in Tivoli on May 25, 1986, issued as Confirmation; a trio record with Lundgaard, Nuages, appeared in 1986, and the double CD Guitar Legacy (1991) repeats the Nuages and Confirmation tracks and adds two more. In October 1996 they went to New York to record New York, N.Y. (SteepleChase, 1997) with the pianist George Cables, the bassist Jay Anderson and the drummer Billy Hart.

In Paris they also work as a trio with a pianist, first Michel Graillier and then Alain Jean-Marie, who is on a run of their records from Intersection (La Lichère, recorded October 10 and 11, 2001 and issued in 2002). The Rainbow of Life (Bee Jazz, 2003) added the bassist Gilles Naturel, Shades of a Dream (Bee Jazz, 2004) the bassist Riccardo Del Fra, and Parisian Passion (Bee Jazz, 2005, recorded in May 2005 at Studio La Buissonne) the trumpeter Stéphane Belmondo and the bassist Pierre Boussaguet. Live in Montpellier (Le Chant du Monde, 2007) documents their stage show Il était une fois... les frères Ferré, performed at the Opéra-Comédie de Montpellier on October 14, 2006 during the Internationales de la Guitare. Brothers to Brothers (Plus Loin Music, 2008) brought in Stéphane and Lionel Belmondo, and in 2009 they joined Angelo Debarre, Romane and others on Django 100, a JMS record for the Reinhardt centenary.

The French state recognized the brothers on April 10, 2012, when the culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand made them Chevaliers des Arts et des Lettres in a ceremony that also honored Biréli Lagrène and Thomas Dutronc. They played the 2004 concert marking thirty years of the singer Pierre Bachelet's career, and La Bande des trois (Label Ouest, 2015), made with the guitarist Christophe Astolfi, turns French songs such as "La Javanaise" and "Les Amoureux des bancs publics" into guitar-trio pieces. Fathers & Sons (Continuo Jazz, released November 17, 2023) is a duo record with the accordionist Ludovic Beier and, on three tracks, the flugelhorn of Stéphane Belmondo; a further album, Soir de Paris, appeared in November 2024. Both brothers are living and still performing in Paris; a March 2026 date at the club Chez Georges was listed under the billing Boulou & Elios Ferré.

The brothers grew up inside the Ferret family's guitar tradition and still play the swing waltzes associated with Matelo and Baro Ferret, but their records range further than a straight manouche program. Boulou came out of the Conservatoire, and his fondness for Bach shows in "Intersection sur un prélude de Bach", which the duo recorded on several of its albums, and in the two-part invention they play on Intersection. They also take bebop as a second language: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie repertoire ("Ornithology", "Donna Lee", "Confirmation", "Hot House") sits next to Reinhardt's "Nuages" on their programs, and the SteepleChase quartet records set them beside American-style rhythm sections. French Wikipedia describes the duo's music as very eclectic, running from the swing waltzes of Matelo and Baro through bebop to Bach, and English Wikipedia calls Boulou one of the great contemporary figures of the manouche tradition. Elios wrote the first six pieces on Brothers to Brothers, and several records add piano, horns or accordion to the two guitars.