She is the shooting star of the expanding swing revival, although, in dedicated circles, she has been known for years as a cult figure.

She's an institution in the field of music from the "golden era", with style, knowhow and sensitivity, that even icons as "Swing Heini" and DJ Günter Discher show respect for.

The Lady from Hamburg, in her classic gangster suits, with fedora hat and two-tone-shoes, calls herself Swingin' Swanee. When she performs at night in the hippest clubs and at swing events across Germany, the constantly increasing swing community follows her to dance the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug.

She lives swing. "Light and easy music - don't make me laugh!" she says, outraged about the way, the music is being made socially acceptable today. "No swing without blues", says the 34 year old, with Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and with the female musicians and bands of the time, eg. Ina Rae and her Melodears, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Lil (the wife of Louis) Armstrong. To bring back their art from the oblivion, is her most important personal goal.

She is involved in the music business: Performing at the POPKOMM in Cologne; and her first CD sampler "Wild Party" recently appeared on the Hamburg label CERATON music.

New York, Chicago, New Orleans - the black music of the 3O's and 4O's is her domain. There she starts searching for her sources. She enjoys when people, thanks to her shimmering androgynous appearance, call out and say: "You look murderously good tonight!"

The Hamburg journalist Irmela Kästner and the photographer Tina Ruisinger from Zurich visited Swantje Harmsen in her apartment in Hamburg and watched her perform for two nights in the "Weisse Maus" and in the "Prinzen Bar", Hamburgs swing clubs on the Kiez in St. Pauli.

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© Tina Ruisinger (Fotos) & Irmela Kästner (Text)