Above you see an embedded playlist that will bring you the music of The Monkey Swingers, This is a band I discovered about three years ago and have included in many episodes of The Swing Shift. This is a four-piece combo, featuring a truly remarkable trumpet player, Matteo Caselli. The playlist begins wit their lockdown video cover of “I Wanna Be Like You” and wraps up with an Italian interview and performance video from March of this year.

The Monkey Swingers were formed in Bologna, Italy in 2015. They play dance Swing music from the 30s with a focus on the early “Lindy Hop” form of Swing. In 2016 they recorded their first EP from which they extracted the song, ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” by Jacob Jacobs to release as their first video clip. In April 2016 they began a fruitful collaboration with the Lindy Hop Swing For Fun school in Bologna for which they perform regularly.

During the 2016/2017 season they performed a small number of concerts in Northern Italy. In May 2017 they debuted their full album, The Monkey Swingers XL which foresees the occasional expansion of this combo from 4 to 9 members thus giving rise to a “small big band.” A second album, I Love Your Shoes, followed a year later.

Aside from the fact this is is a great little Swing band, I’m also posting this here to remind you that, starting at midnight EDT, Sunday night/Monday morning, The AIR will begin a 24-hour marathon of The Swing Shift, part of our week of 24-hour marathons to give yours truly a bit of a break.