Yehoodi is an internet website dedicated to swing dancing and swing music. Founded in September 1998 by Manu Smith and Frank Dellario, its central feature is a popular Internet forum currently staffed by six volunteer administrators. Yehoodi.com is one of the oldest and most frequented swing dance community websites online today. Named for the Cab Calloway song "Who's Yehoodi?" and subtitled "The website for the hardcore hep-cat swinger!", Yehoodi is devoted to swing dances of every style, though the key focus is on Lindy Hop. The Yehoodi main page features a comprehensive source of international swing dancing news, while the site itself hosts three radio shows, "Yehoogle" (a guide to swing dance resources online), and an international calendar of swing dance events. It also sponsors live dance events and has produced a CD specifically for swing dancers.
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Discussion boards in swing dance today
Discussion boards have developed as perhaps the most important online community structures in contemporary swing dance culture, bringing dancers around the world together online and promoting dance events and dance culture in local communities. They develop networks between local communities and among individual dancers that contribute to an international community of dancers with a passion for African American vernacular dance (and contemporary as well as vintage dance music), as well as facilitating international and domestic travel for hundreds of dancers every year. Eight years after its founding and twenty years after the revival of lindy hop, the Yehoodi discussion board remains one of the most significant features on the online swing-dancing landscape.
Yehoodi discussion board
Occasionally criticised for its bias towards the East Coast of the United States, Yehoodi hosts perhaps the most well-known swing dance discussion board in the world, with April 2006 seeing a total of 9,168 members and 654,790 articles. The most Yehoodi board users ever online at one time totalled 310 at 10:27 p.m. on Monday, January 24, 2005. The largest local swing dance communities in the world number around two or three thousand, while internationally, there are many thousands of individual dancers.
Discussion on the Yehoodi board is centrally concerned with swing dancing, though (as with every other online discussion board) the busiest section of the board is the Kitchen Sink (the "off-topic" forum). Yehoodi's forum topics are grouped by region (within the United States and internationally) and topic (including dancing, music, events, workshops and classes), and are moderated by members of the community.
Yehoodi radio shows
Yehoodi is home to three radio shows - Hey, Mr. Jesse, a talk show hosted by the popular DJ Jesse Miner; Yehoodi Radio, a streaming radio station DJed by guest swing dance DJs from around the world; and Yehoodi Talk Show, a talk show hosted by Manu Smith and Slick Rik. The Yehoodi Talk Show is known for several running gags, one of them including the "hotness" of a user named Westiegrrl.
The Yehoodi Radio Show often refers to the SwingDJs discussion board, the only internationally focussed discussion board in the world devoted to DJing music for swing dancing. SwingDJs is widely regarded by swing dancers as the most significant and reliable source of information about DJing swing music for dancers of all swing styles (though with an emphasis on lindy hop, the most popular form). The Yehoodi radio show is often utilized by swing DJs as a showcase for their abilities, advertising their skills for swing dance event organisers, whose events can attract anywhere from several hundred to thousands of dancers. The latter is particularly true of major events such as lindy exchanges and swing dance camps such as the Herräng Dance Camp, which runs for a month annually and attracts thousands of dancers from all over the world.
Yehoodi calendar
Yehoodi also hosts a calendar of international swing dance events, generally considered one of the most reliable and comprehensive resources for an international community of dancers and teachers who travel regularly to dance. In any one month, Yehoodi also sponsors the weekly Frim Fram Jam in New York City and regular one-off events.