The Music
There are a lot of great stories in Frankie Manning’s autobiography about the Savoy Ballroom. One of my favorites is about a band that played at the Savoy and got annoyed when the dancers didn’t have as enthusiastic a response to a song as they wanted. Whitey, the Savoy Ballroom bouncer who carried a lot of weight in the place, overheard one of the musicians saying “So what? They’re just dancers! They’re not important. We’re the ones who make the music.” Whitey was the wrong person to overhear, for he spread the word amongst the dance floor that absolutely no one was to dance to their next song no matter how good it was. And so no one did and the song fell flat. It lost its energy, its passion, its motivation. In this way Whitey showed how profound an affect the dancers had on shaping their music.
I think this give and take between dancers and music is often overlooked. I am very interested in this perspective on a dancers relationship with music. Last year, I was lucky enough to get to interview Gordon Webster, one of the top musicians in the country that lindy hoppers want to dance to the most, and the amazing singer Brianna Thomas. As a friend of mine once put it, They are the rockstars of the dance world. Both professional musicians who started out in a very different musical community, had a lot to say on the subject. They said most professional musicians look down on those who play for dancers because it has to be simpler, you can’t do all the fancy stuff because its not danceable. However, the scenario of playing in a club for other musicians all sitting around chatting and listening, while rewarding in its own way, is not nearly as excitng.
When playing for dancers, there are times when the room fills up with so much power and energy that everyone just stops, gathers around the musicians and claps or stomps their feet to the beat, cheering them on. Its much more intimate and personal, and lindy hoppers/blues dancers are so grateful and appreciative of good music. When they play for us, they can draw inspiration and ideas from the way they see dancers responding and interpreting their music. Brianna Thomas said it took her a while to learn to interact with the dancers, that she can have them sing back to her, cause them to cheer and react a certain way. It changes the dynamic of not just the musicians to the dancers but how the musicians play and communicate with each other, as well as how dancers communicate with their dance partners. Its a completely different kind of challenge for musicians and one that is very personal and satisfying.
This is a video I made about Gordon Webster’s band. I am aware that there are a whole lot of things wrong with the video, but considering it was my first time really working in video and that it was such a large difficult topic to make a little documentary on, I think it mostly successfully gets the point across. One day I’ll get the time to re-edit it.
Of course, it isn’t always live music that we dance to. DJing really has an art and technique to it, and there are famous DJs within the dance community that get hired to fly across the country just to share their music with dancers. With Lindy Hop the music tends to be more classic swing music, a variety of big bands from the 1920s and 1930s to current bands such as Gordon Webster, Solomon Douglas, The Loose Marbles, Tin Pan and the Cangelosi Cards. All known as Jazz bands who often play specifically for dancers, music from their cds are often djed at dances. There’s more modern music that can be played and danced to, as shown in the post below, but that occurs more often in blues dancing.
Music for Lindy Hop and Blues does sometimes overlap; there are uptempo blues songs that can be lindy hopped to. However, because there is no set footwork for Blues dancing and it is a lot more versatile, it opens the musical possibilities more. Blues tends to be slower but isn’t always. What makes it blues is more about the feeling, that heartbreaking, soulful, intense expression that is so inspiring to blues dancers. A lot of current music is excellent for blues dancing because it has a similar feel in a lot of ways.
For samples of popular music for lindy hop go here:
http://blog.alainwong.com/2007/08/27/song-playlist-at-the-montreal-lindy-hop-exchange-2007/
http://www.rhapsody.com/playlistcentral/playlistdetail?playlistId=10333556
For samples of popular music for blues dancing go here:
Lindy Hop and Blues Dancing 
Leave a comment