The Hot Sardines are thrilled to bring their “liquor-drinking jazz”’ to Jason Moran’s Fats Waller Dance Party at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre on March 11. Called “joyous and foolish and graceful” by the New York Times, the Fats Waller Dance Party is a riotous celebration fusing early jazz with Motown, hip-hop and house.
Created in 2011, the Fats Waller Dance Party brings the party atmosphere of Waller’s performances in the 1920s and 1930s to a generation that’s gotten used to thinking of jazz as a serious genre. Moran explained, “Having a Fats Waller Dance Party is trying to understand how music engages an audience that shows up to actually get down, you know, not sit in a chair.”