Callum Davies reports back from Swingamajig for us and he had a ruddy good time.
As far as some are concerned, summer kicks off as soon as May does. The weather doesn’t seem to agree this year, but with Troyfest and Swingamajig arriving on the first weekend, festival season has officially begun. I have it on fairly good authority that Troyfest was a blast and the presence of The Mouse Outfit, Dr. Meaker and others testifies to that, but since I actually went to Swingamajig, that’ll be the focus.
Now in its second year, Swingamajig is a one-day event hosted in Birmingham by local heroes Electric Swing Circus and although the name, the curators and the aesthetic would suggest a strong focus on all things electro-swing, it’s a lot more varied than that.
The event took place in the Spotlight complex in Digbeth and featured two outdoor stages, two indoor ones, a dancehall, several bars, food kiosks, merchandise stands and a decidedly dangerous area populated by people using hula hoops (hula hoopers? Whatever). The main stage played host to most of the bigger bands, including the ever-reliable folk band Sam Green and the Midnight Heist, the absolutely gigantic Renegade Brass Band and ESC themselves, who played a storming set replete with new material and a rare live performance of their thumping jungle track: Little Phatty, featuring live drumming (which is fairly impressive given the tempo of the average jungle tune).
Elsewhere was the smaller Hot Club de Swing stage, which featured many acts who have in the past appeared at ESC’s club night of same name, like Lunatrix and Jenova Collective. Later in the evening it also played host to the gypsy-punk-dance insanity of Molotov Jukebox, fronted by the peerlessly energetic Natalia Tena, perhaps best known for playing Tonks in Harry Potter and Osha in Game of Thrones.
The dance hall featured workshops from numerous instructors during the day, most notably King Charles, who made a name for himself dethroning Michael Flatley in the music video for C2C’s ‘Happy’. At the same time the Ragtime Records stage was breaking out all the circus and burlesque tropes you could ever hope for in the form of an hourly show. Aerial silks, mimes, it had it all. By night both these indoor stages thrummed with the pulse of a succession of massive DJ sets, the most significant of which was provided by A-Skillz, who certainly lived up to his reputation for setting the room alight when he came on at around 2am. The whole thing finally rounded out at half 5, by which point the survivors had been dancing harder and longer than any human being should be able to.
The entire event absolutely buzzed from start to finish and all the stages were organized with an eye towards variety so that things never got stale. Birmingham is gradually building a reputation as an up-and-coming city in terms of musical output and events like Swingamajig are throwing more weight behind that claim. Electric Swing Circus are edging ever-closer to a worldwide platform, with numerous touring jaunts to Europe and a place on Glastonbury’s bill last year already under their belts and the promise of bigger things to come, but they haven’t forgotten their roots – in fact they celebrate them and Swingamajig epitomizes that. Here’s hoping that it continues to illuminate the early summer for many, many years to come.
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