COVID-19 was supposed to end the music for German swing band The Swingin’ Hermlins. Instead, it turned their living room into a global stage.
On March 14, 2020, Andrej Hermlin performed what he believed could be his last concert as coronavirus restrictions swept across Europe and live entertainment ground to a halt.
The following day, the band began performing online. The idea came from Joyce Hermlin, Andrej’s Kenyan wife, who suggested that if audiences could no longer gather in concert halls, the family could bring the music to them through social media.
The result was “The Music Goes Round ’N Round”, a series of daily performances broadcast from the Hermlins’ home at 7 p.m. What started as an attempt to keep performing during lockdown developed into an international community, with audiences from Kenya, Uganda, the United States, Israel, Russia, Ukraine and other parts of the world following the broadcasts.
“We started off on March 15, 2020 with the 1st lockdown. And it became quite something,” Andrej said. “The promise was to perform every night at 7 p.m. and all of it takes. At the end, we did 800 shows.”
The performances gave the band a way to remain connected with audiences at a time when musicians around the world were struggling with cancelled concerts and prolonged isolation.
The irony was not lost on Andrej. He had spent decades building a career around a style of music from the 1930s and 1940s, an era when swing dominated popular music and offered audiences an escape from the difficulties of the Great Depression.
During COVID-19, the same music found itself performing a similar role for a new generation.
“The music we are playing is not only a concert music, it’s also a dance music,” Andrej’s son David said.
“It is more than the music, the fashion, the way you talk to each other, the way you dress up for a show.”
David grew up in the music. He began performing with his father as a child and eventually became a drummer, singer, dancer and songwriter. The pandemic broadcasts became an important part of that family journey, with David and his sister Rachel among the younger faces helping keep the performances alive.
The experience also helped expose swing to audiences who may never have encountered it in a concert hall.
For David, the continued interest in the genre is evidence that swing has moved beyond nostalgia.
“The music is obviously not dying out,” he said.
The family’s connection to Africa is also reflected in its broader outreach. David says the band has supported solidarity performances and worked with young people, including a group of street-connected children in Kampala who had been taught swing dancing.
The pandemic eventually passed, but the experience permanently changed the Hermlins.
The band returned to live performances, while Andrej gradually handed leadership to David. From January 2026, David became the band’s leader, with his father remaining involved in managing the orchestra.
Now, the story that began in a Berlin living room during lockdown is coming to Kenya.
The Swingin’ Hermlins are scheduled to perform in Nairobi in March 2027, bringing their recreation of 1920s and 1930s swing to a live Kenyan audience. The concert will form part of the band’s “The Music Goes Round And Around” programme
That makes the Nairobi performance more than a return to the stage.
For a band that spent the pandemic looking into camera lenses instead of at audiences, it represents a return to the very thing COVID-19 took away: people gathered together, listening, dancing and sharing the same room.
And for Andrej, Kenya is not simply another stop on the international tour.
He first came to the country in 2001 after meeting Joyce and has maintained a long relationship with Kenya.
“I used to say second home, I am not even sure it is my second home,” he said.
Nearly three years after the pandemic forced the Hermlins into their living room, the music that once travelled from Berlin to the world through a screen will arrive in Nairobi in person.
The audience will no longer be watching from lockdown.
They will be in the room.
