Caravan Palace - “Dramophone”

~Zumi Underground

Despite this particular video hitting over 33 million views, most people I’ve talked to on the topic have no idea a genre of music called “electro swing” exists so maybe it’s really only like 500k of us playing this song 66 times each or something. If you were already in the know, you’ve probably heard this one before, but hopefully you’ll enjoy having it return to your speakers. Caravan Palace and Parov Stelar are a couple of the go-tos for electro swing.

“Dramaphone” is about as quintessential electro swing as it gets—an energetic BPM in the 120s, muted horns and saxes, simple lyrics (sometimes absent all together), swingy stand-up bass, all accented by electronic percussion. I’m just a lite swing fan so maybe more hardcore fans will disagree, but it really just feels like a very modern, updated version of the genre having successfully captured the soul of the 20s (music-wise…not all the racism and war and stuff). The video even gives a nice little nod to the iconic Josephine Baker.

This one definitely belongs on a fun weekend evening playlist.

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