Usually, swing songs are about one of two things: love or food. Love is a usual enough subject for songs to explore, but food? While it might seem strange at a glance, that swing features so many songs about food is unsurprising given the vernacular origins of the music and dance, which matured in the house rent parties of Harlem in the twilight of the Roaring Twenties and through the gloomy first years of the Great Depression.

The threat of eviction loomed especially large in Harlem. Throughout the ‘20s, rent across New York City was rising steadily as the economy boomed, but incomes, especially in communities of color, lagged. Later, the Great Depression made housing security an even more prominent issue. Exclusionary zoning laws and high demand in the 1920s drove up residential housing costs in the urban core of New York. While white New Yorker’s cashed in on the prosperity of the 1920s and fled Manhattan’s rising rents and decaying infrastructure for newly developed residential areas in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, black New Yorkers were denied the credit necessary for such mobility and were met with outright discrimination in the housing market. In addition, black tenants faced rent gouging, charged $20 to $30 more (about $250 to $400 in 2020 dollars) per month than white residents for comparable units. Often, black residents spent almost half their yearly income on rent alone.

In response to these hardships, a new cultural institution took hold in Harlem: the rent party. If someone in the community was short on rent, it was customary to throw a big party, hiring musicians and making food to attract as many neighbors as they could. Furniture would be pushed aside so partygoers could dance, transforming living rooms and bedrooms into ballrooms. On Saturday night, the doors would open. Admission was for a small fee, around 25 cents or so, and for another quarter you could get dinner or some bootlegged or home-distilled liquor. Music, dancing, and homemade food were the recipe for a successful party that would make back the costs and then some, paying the rent for a month or two.

It was in this atmosphere of exuberance amid struggle that swing had its birth. Even as ballrooms like the Savoy became popular and swing became more entrenched as a cultural institution, the spirit of the rent party lived on in the music. Food was one of the shared cultural objects to which everyone could relate, and so it found its way into the music. Whether it’s the “crunchy crunch” of potato chips, or coleslaw “chopped up finer than a bale of straw,” or the “frim fram sauce with the oss’ ‘n’ fay and shafafa on the side,” the genre is rife with songs that both appreciate food in itself and use it as a foundation on which to construct metaphor and entendre.

In this playlist are some of our favorite swing songs in which food figures prominently. These days, we might be stuck inside indefinitely, but we can still dance around our kitchens, enjoy some good music, and make some food with those we love should we be lucky enough to be near them. As the founders of swing knew better than anyone, these activities can bring a smile and carry us through even when times are tough.

Playlist: Food Swing

Originally written for the Lindy on Sproul Facebook feed

Bibliography

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