Walk into a jazz night in Nairobi today, and you will notice the crowd is not just older men nursing whisky in a corner. There are young Kenyans, couples on a first date, students who found the gig through a friend’s Instagram story.
This is the scene that David Hermlin and his father, Andrej, are walking into in March 2027 for their upcoming concert. ‘Nairobi’s jazz scene has grown enough that we take this seriously,’ Andrej tells BDLife.
Jazz clubs in Nairobi have quietly built loyal followings. For instance, one jazz festival in Nairobi was dismissed as a non-starter, or could only attract a handful of fans but it instead pulled in 14,000.
That pull is what brings The Swing Dance Orchestra to Nairobi in March 2027, recreating the sound of the 1930s. ‘Swing is a jazz style. Maybe the most popular jazz style there has ever been.’
Andrej believes the music and the country are a fit, even if swing is less familiar here than hip-hop or benga. ‘Kenyans love entertainment, dancing, fun, joy,’ he says. ‘Swing is not club music, not soft and melancholic. It is entertaining, very danceable, and very easy to understand.’
Swing grew out of African-American musicians like Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, and carries African roots reaching back long before the big bands of Berlin or New York. ‘Jazz owes Africa quite a lot, actually, its roots,’ he says.
Kenya is not a new stop for this family, even if the concert is. Andrej has travelled here for more than 25 years, since he met his wife in 2001. He remembers the village in Kirinyaga with no electricity or water, and falling in love with the place almost immediately.
‘I broke down in tears at the airport. I didn’t want to go,’ he says of that first trip home to Germany. The feeling never changed. ‘I feel nothing at all when I leave Berlin. When I step out of the plane here and take my car, it is just homecoming. When I leave, I cry.’ He now considers Kenya home. ‘Being given the chance to perform here is a dream come true,’ he says.
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The pandemic tested the band differently. When the first lockdown hit in March 2020, Andrej watched most musicians sink into despair. His wife had a different idea. ‘She came up with a great idea to create a daily broadcast on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube,’ he says. The promise was a 30-minute show every night, for as long as it took.
It took 800 nights, viewed in Kenya, Uganda, Israel, Russia and Ukraine, by a community still calling itself Hermlinville. ‘It was a beacon of hope in times when there was no hope,’ he says. When halls reopened, the band carried that habit into the streets, playing for passers-by stunned to find a big band performing for free on a Berlin pavement. ‘You have to meet your audience wherever they are,’ he says.
That instinct carried the orchestra into its next chapter. In January 2026, after a hip replacement slowed him down, Andrej formally handed the orchestra to his son. ‘I believe the older generation should not block young people from achieving their dreams,’ he says. ‘He is by far more talented than I ever was. A great arranger, songwriter, drummer, singer, and above all, a great band leader.’ He still runs the business side, but the baton now belongs to David.
For David, swing was never a choice. It was something he was born into. ‘My mom is from Kenya. I listened a lot to gospel, pop, R and B and soul. And then I had my father rehearsing his orchestra in the living room.’
He was barely three when he watched a drummer behind a huge 1930s-style kit, the bass drum nearly as tall as he was. ‘I told my dad, Papa, I want drums,’ he says. His father bought him a small kit, and he has not stopped playing since.
He got his first gig with Andrej’s band at four. It did not go as planned. ‘I was so ready to show everybody I was capable of playing the fastest rhythm ever. And my father counted it too slowly. I never forgave him. He didn’t talk to me for two weeks,’ David says, shaking his head with a half-smile.
By his teens, David had his own kit and his own trio. ‘There is a difference between when you like the music or you’re really obsessed with it,’ he says. ‘If you really want to play this music authentically, you have to understand the spirit, read the books, watch the documentaries, and look at how they dressed.’
‘Swing has a beautiful melody, a very easy rhythm. You feel the people playing it are happy at that moment,’ he says. It is music built for movement, not sitting still.
He dances with his younger sister Rachel, the band’s vocalist and, in his view, one of the few singers alive who can deliver this music the way it was meant to be sung. ‘It’s not the technical way of singing,’ he says. ‘It has a lot to do with feeling and conveying the message of the song. She does it the best.’
What surprises him most is who shows up now. He never expected swing to find a young audience, yet it keeps doing exactly that. David posts videos of himself in a full 1930s tuxedo behind his vintage drum kit, and some clips have pulled six million views.
‘I think they see a young person not pretending to be someone from back then. It’s just me enjoying this music, and they can identify with it,’ he says. ‘It is easy to understand.’
Perhaps that is the strange power of swing. It never left; it just found a new bandleader. The suits belong to another decade, and most arrangements were written before anyone in the room was born, but once the horns come in and the rhythm settles, the distance between the 1930s and today somehow closes.
For David, the reason he keeps playing is simple. ‘It makes people happy, it makes me happy,’ and nearly a century later, nobody has found a reason to let it go.