Innovations and Evolutions: Electro Swing

What is Electro Swing? :

It is a music genre in which artists sample vintage music and mix it somehow with pop, EDM, and electronic dance.

Origins:

According to a few websites electro swing’s point of origin was 1990’s hiphop. A few hiphop artists decided to to try something new and integrate jazz samples into their songs. Some of these artists include: Guru (with his song”Loungin”), US3 (with “Cantaloop”), A Tribe Called Quest (with “We’ve Got the Jazz”), and Madlib’s Slim’s Return. The best example of these to really hear both genre’s was Slim’s Return. It came out in 2003 which isn’t the earliest song I could find but it shows the best example of using Jazz.

This really is the perfect example to show the origins of electro swing because its all about reusing vintage music and adding a modern twist (or at least modern in 2003 for this example). In the music video he even spends a lot of time looking through vinyl records to use in his music (starting at 0:23.) Also starting right at the intro of his song (0:12) he splices in the stringed instruments from some old jazz music. Then he does it throughout but you really notice is again in the outro with the same string sample.

I still much prefer modern electro swing over the jazz hop songs. For example this song is really repetitive and mellow-sounding . Plus there aren’t really any words except “what”, “yea”, and mumbling. I tend to enjoy songs I can sing along too.

Changes in the Direction:

Pretty soon after the 1990’s, the early 2000’s gave us artists like Caravan palace, Parov Stelar, and more. Parov Stellar’s first electro swing album in 2004 and Caravan Palace came out with their first album in 2008.

Artists saw and are still seeing the possibilities of this genre and developing it. My personal favorite band still is Caravan Palace but I’ve already played some of their music in the blog and there are two artists that needs the spot light specifically for their song “Lost in the Rhythm”. This is by Jamie Berry featuring Octavia Rose.

This is such an amazing song to me because it automatically makes me want to dance. Also you can sing to it which I love even more. It gives me gramophone vibes and I may be taking “color of the music” too literally in this description but, it makes me think of black and white movies but littered with bright colors from the pop aspect of it. Anyway it is almost completely different from “Slim’s Return” except for the fact that they both take inspiration from the past.

Thanks for reading!

Works Cited:

Altieri, Ashley. “A Brief Introduction To Electro Swing.” The Odyssey Online, 21 Feb. 2018, http://www.theodysseyonline.com/introduction-electro-swing.

Leng, Karen. “5 Great Songs Where Jazz Meets Hip Hop.” Double J, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 27 June 2019, http://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/lists/5-great-songs-where-jazz-meets-hip-hop/10273320.

“Caravan Palace.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 June 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_Palace.

“Parov Stelar.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 June 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parov_Stelar.