Music
On Friday, swing out to the music of the Fried Bananas! For Saturday evening we are pleased to bring back the Solomon Douglas Quintet to play another CTLX!
Fried Bananas - Friday night
The Fried Bananas was created with the goal of providing music for swing dancers and plays a mix of blues, swing, and gypsy jazz. The majority of the members live in Boston though Josh lives in Albany and Jeramie lives in DC. Shawn Hershey put the Fried Bananas together in December of 2006 to play at a Lindy Hop house party for his girlfriend’s 30th birthday party. Since their creation, The Fried Bananas have played most of the Boston swing venues, including Blues Cafe, Swing City, the Concord Scout House, and the Hop to the Beat dance. The Fried Bananas have also traveled as far as Montreal to play for Blues dancers.
Solomon Douglas Quintet - Saturday night
Solomon Douglas is a jazz pianist and bandleader, whose various bands have played at more than fifty exchanges, camps, workshops, and other events in North America, Asia, and Australia in the past eight years. His experience as a swing dancer and dance instructor gives him an understanding unique among musicians of the music that swing dancers and blues dancers like to dance to! His influences as a pianist include Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Gene Harris, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk. The Solomon Douglas Quintet (featuring Eric Heveron-Smith on the trombone) plays a mixture of musical styles including blues, old-school swing, and groovy mainstream swinging jazz with tinges of bop and soul-jazz.
DJs
Devona Cartier
(New York, NY)
She grew up on Blues and R&B, preferring to listen to oldies on the radio in the hopes of hearing Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, Ruth Brown, and the Jackson 5. Devona was drawn to DJing by the need to dance to Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, James Cotton, Stick McGee, and the like. When she began DJing in 2004 most “blues music” was slow jazz and R&B. She was one of the first to begin playing sets dedicated to music from the Blues genre, spinning a wide range styles and tempos. But don’t assume blues is all she plays. Devona is a regular DJ at Frim Fram in NYC, and plays for a variety of Lindy Hop events nationally. She also has been know to DJ for Balboa and Carolina Shag. Her music collection is broad; expect her sets to have variety and to keep the crowd, any crowd, dancing.
Loreto Agdinaoay
(Cleveland, OH)
Slow and moody, black ‘n’ bluesy. That’s how Lo rolls. One of the few beacons of groove in Cleveland, Ohio, an otherwise fast dance town, Lo welcomes any chance to play for dancers who want music with a little grease and a whole lotta soul. He promises to give you the “Blues Face” - you know, that look you get when you hear a song with so much stank, you wanna go home and slap yo’ mama. He’s no one-trick pony though, he’s as versatile as they come… If you want it, Lo’s got it; if Lo doesn’t have it, he’ll go get it; if he can’t find it, you probably didn’t want to hear it anyways
You may have heard some of his stuff at exchanges in Florida, Atlanta, Columbus, Denver, and Waterloo in 2008.
Rayned Wiles
(Baltimore, MD), Dance instructor and DJ
Taught lindy/swing dance classes locally and at dance camps around the country including Beantown Dance Camp in Boston, MA, and Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, W.V. Worked as a DJ for numerous major dance workshops, exchanges, competitions and events across the United State and Canada, including: American Lindy Hop Championships, North Atlantic Dance Championships, U.S. Open Swing Dance Championships, America’s Classic Swing Dance Championships, New York Open Lindy Hop Championships, Harlem Jazz Dance Festival, U.S.A. Grand Nationals Swing and Shag Dance Championships, and the World Lindy Hop Championships.
Solomon Douglas
Solomon is a frequent guest DJ at dance venues all over the United States, including the Century Ballroom (Seattle) and Frim Fram Jam (NYC). His musical tastes span a wide range of swinging music, including pre-swing “hot jazz” (Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton), the Swing Era (Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson), post–Swing Era big band jazz (such as 1950s and 60s Duke Ellington and Count Basie), modern small-group swinging jazz (Oscar Peterson, Gene Harris), and of course the great vocalists (Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Ernestine Anderson, Joe Williams). At Blues dancing events, he plays the great blues recordings of the above-mentioned jazz artists, in addition to such Blues artists as Jeannie Cheatham, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Witherspoon, Tab Benoit, B.B. King, Junior Wells, and Jimmy Smith. Dancers often comment that his DJ sets include unusual freshness and variety; he always strives to play great music that many dancers aren’t familiar with, rather than sticking to the same over-played favorites.
Camille Fontanella
(Northampton, MA)
Camille has been swing dancing since 1998. Camille hosts regular dances, teaches, choreographs, and performs with the non-profit Lindy League of Western Massachusetts and Crazylegs. She has been DJing throughout the region since 2003.
Meghan Fitzpatrick
(Albany, NY)
Meghan began DJ’ing when she moved to Albany in the summer of 2006. She plays regularly for weekly practices and dances in the area and has DJ’d at the past two Albany exchanges. DJ’ing from a wide range of music, Meghan gets the energy going at dances and plays the right stuff to keep dancers on the floor. Meghan is also a member of the Albany Chill organization and helps to plan and organize local and national events for lindy hop in the Albany area.
Dhruv Bhargava
(Stamford, CT)
Most dancers in the swing and blues CT scene cannot really pronounce his name, but they like it when he deejays. He gets invited to deejay at various dance venues throughout the state for evening dances and late nights and likes to keep his sets full of music that gets people on the floor and keeps them there. He does it by catching the pulse of the floor and by playing the good ‘ol favorites, by playing juicy songs that dancers may not have heard but hit the sweet spot and catch their fancy and by letting the music be mellow, badass, groovy, pacy in turn while keeping a flow going.
Chris Oksanen
(New Haven, CT)
Chris has been avid music collector and music listener for many years. He has a fine collection of jazz and blues and enjoys seeking out stimulating and fun music for dancers. He gives thoughtful consideration to song selection, the musical tastes of the dancers, and toward maintaining positive energy and excitement on the dance floor. His djing style leans toward jazz with a groovy soulful quality and blues (and any music that feels great to dance to). Chris is a Connecticutt dj and a swing dancer of nearly ten years.