A great evening for swing djing

Yesterday was a great night at Uplands nation. I felt like I had found "The Flow" most of the time. I heard positive things from people, that's always nice. I'd love more feedback, just tell me what you think; good things, bad things, suggestions or whatever. Don't be shy.

If you really like or dislike a song while I'm djing, come and tell me, that gives me important information about what songs certain types of dancers like and I can more properly adapt the music to the dancers on the floor. I always tries to look around the room and see which dancers are dancing right now and which are resting. It's hard to know if the people which are sitting are just tired for the moment or if they don't like the music for some reason: wrong style or too fast.

I try to keep the music varied but I also want to have a flow so I won't jump between styles between each song, if you have a flow you can build a certain mood. Yesterday I felt like building a mood with hi-fi recordings of big bands with a "fat" sound. I also tested a influence from the tango scene by djing a tanda of Benny Goodman songs (A tanda is a set of 4 songs of a certain style).

It would be interesting to dj an evening of just tandas, but I think I'll never bring myself to do just like tango where a cortina ("curtain") song is played between the tandas and all the people leave the floor to find new partners. That just doesn't fit the swing scene.

I'm sorry I could fit in a request by Mr R. If you have a request, tell me as soon as possible, then it's more likely that I've brought the music with me and that I can fit it in to the flow of the music. Next time, perhaps?

Where you there when I djed? Tell me what you thought.

Portena Jazz Band: Sugar Foot Stomp

Have you ever heard of tango from Argentina and Buenos Aires? Of course you have. But have you heard about hot jazz music from Argentina?

Here is Porteña Jazz Band performing Sugar Foot Stomp in Spain 1991.




Learn more about Porteña Jazz Band.

What do you think of the video clip with Porteña Jazz Band playing Sugar Foot Stomp? Tell me.

Excerpts from Social Dancing in America

This is the third part of an interview with Ralph G. Giordano who recently published his book Social Dancing in America: A History and Reference Volume 2 Lindy Hop to Hip Hop, 1901-2000.

[Part 1: How come you wrote a book about social dancing in America?]
[Part 2: Which dances do you write about in the book? ]

Part 3: Can you share some interesting facts about Lindy hop?

I can give you some excerpts from the book:

"Most Americans only saw the Lindy Hop in newsreels of the Harvest Moon Ball competitions and movies such as A Day at the Races (1937), Buck Privates (1941), Hellzapoppin’ (1941), Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1942), Groovie Movie (1944) a nine-minute movie short, and Killer Diller (1948). Each provides some of the best acrobatic performance and smooth style versions of the dance ever filmed.

The acrobatic aerial dance movements were eye-catching stellar performances by the best professional Lindy Hop dancers in the country. They were extremely fast paced and choreographed for maximum effect on the movie scene and definitely not for simple enjoyment on a social dance floor."

"The comedy A Day at the Races, starring the Marx Brothers did well at the box office. At the time, the Marx Brothers were one of the top Hollywood box office attractions. Scenes in the movie offer an excellent contemporary singer Alan Jones singing in the "crooning" style made popular by Bing Crosby. In various dance scenes Groucho Marx performs a Tango, Fox Trot, Rhumba, and Charleston.

The film also has an ensemble dance scene between Harpo Marx and some African American children and another scene of African Americans adults performing the Lindy Hop. Unfortunately a large segment of America did not get to see either the Harpo scene or the Lindy Hop scene. Since these scenes involved "racial mixing," they were censored out of distribution copies throughout the south and other areas of the United States. (At that time, this was a common practice of all Hollywood movies).

Copies with deleted scenes continued to air well into the 1970s on television stations. It was not until the very late 20th century that the movie was shown intact. By that time the age of the movie regulated it to specialty cable stations dedicated for movie buffs that regulated the segregation to obscure trivia status."