Video: Max Golfar on his Swing & Bass nights
A Nottingham student has started to put on club nights to bring people closer together than ever with a different style of music.
Max Golfar, 21, from London, studies broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University and is also a promoter for Swing & Bass, a club night which he founded.
Swing & Bass combines modern electronic genres such as house, drum and bass and hip-hop with 1930s-style swing and jazz music; their biggest night so far, The Jitterbug Ball, takes place at Spanky Van Dyke’s this Friday (April 21).
Max’s main aim with the nights is to bring people together to show them new music while DJing at his nights under the guise of Fizzy Gillespie.
Max spoke to Notts TV’s Jake Brigstock about how it all started, how he got into DJing and what keeps him going.
“I walked into Rough Trade one day and said to the guys there, you should put on a swing and jazz themed night, there’s nothing really like that in the city.
They weren’t sure but I went for it and emailed them saying what I wanted to do, the people I wanted to get and they said yes to it.
We did one which was a test and I never really expected much to come of it but it went down quite well.
It was really rewarding and it was nice to see people coming together and to be able to see people listening to music they perhaps weren’t necessarily hugely exposed to.
There was a really friendly atmosphere too and it was great to see that.
I feel it has been somewhat successful so far, I’ve really enjoyed the experience and a lot of people have come down and enjoyed it.
It’s a really positive thing for people to find new music – it’s such a wonderful thing.
At first, I wanted to do it for fun but then I realised how rewarding it was to see people coming together and there wasn’t anything like that in Nottingham and I wanted to see that gap filled.
The music we play has those elements of modern electronic music that people are familiar with plus the more vintage elements to it.
It’s very happy and it’s almost impossible not to dance to; it really brings out a positive side to people and we wanted to make that community where people can express themselves and be who they want to be.
It’s not just about having a party – it’s about coming together with different people but we do get to have a good boogie at the same time.
Some of the headliners we’ve had so far are Dutty Moonshine, The C@ in the H@ and Phil Mac and we’ve got Jamie Berry, Catjam and Sacha Dieu coming up on Friday.
They’re not necessarily names you may have heard of if you’re not familiar with the scene, but they’ve been around playing all the big festivals like Glastonbury, Boomtown and Bestival.
They’ve perfected their craft and are trying to push a new, unique sound and they have such passion and love for the music that it really comes through when they’re up on stage.
I got into DJing when I was at a festival and, to cut a long story short, I somehow ended up behind the decks at a stage where one of the stage managers was playing.
They asked for some of us to cover and, at the time, we had no idea how to DJ but we immediately said yes.
We were quite drunk at the time, which helped, and we ended up playing for like an hour, just fading in and out of songs – we were rubbish!
But we loved doing it so I thought if it’s that much fun, I need to learn to do this for real so I made it my mission to have a go and practice and I just started playing the right music at the right time to the right people.
These events we’ve got are for absolutely everyone.”
