Got some gypsy in your soul? Next weekend is the time to take it out dancing.

This Friday and Saturday mark the fifth-annual Midwest Gypsy Swing Festival, the only event of its kind in the region. Performed just south of Madison in a barn wired for sound, the former one-day celebration this year has grown to two days and will include a dance tent along with the concerts, workshops and late-night bonfire that have become festival traditions.

"Gypsy swing" or "gypsy jazz" is the label given to a genre that mixes American jazz standards with fast-flying rhythms and the joyous musical minors that speak to its gypsy roots.

"It smacks of European flavor immediately," says Sims Delaney-Potthoff, leader of the Madison band Harmonious Wail and primary organizer of the festival. "It's romantically exciting and exotic.'"

The patron saint of gypsy jazz is its inventor, Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), a gypsy guitarist born in Belgium who grew up in Paris playing the "musette" style of the day before he discovered American jazz through a Louis Armstrong record. Reinhardt joined forces in the 1930s with French jazz violinist extraordinaire Stephane Grappelli with the "Quintette of the Hot Club of France," creating a popular new style in the process.

"Django is absolutely a musical genius, really in touch with the spirit of what music is, the transformative, uplifting spirit of music," says Delaney-Potthoff. "This music just has such energy to it -- when people listen to it, it just speaks to you."

The Django sound has undergone a renaissance in recent years, with highly skilled musicians carrying on the passion and genre-bending sound.

Reinhardt serves as an inspiration not only for his musical innovations -- but for the astounding fact that, after a fire claimed the use of two fingers on his left hand, his lightning-speed guitar work was performed with the remaining two fingers and a thumb.

Today, "Every major city has a hot club of,'" says Delaney-Potthoff. "Hot Club of Detroit, Hot Club of Los Angeles ...

"There's a Hot Club of Tokyo. I just got an e-mail yesterday from a guy from Italy who wants to come over. So there's this community of gypsy jazzers that's been growing."

And a festival that's been growing, too. Set in "Art in the Barn," a picturesque spot owned by Anne and Bill Conzemius, the Midwest Gypsy Swing Festival is limited to 200 tickets per day, and "we always sell out," says Maggie Delaney-Potthoff, Sims' wife and vocalist for Harmonious Wail.

The origins for the event are "really innocent in a way," she says. "We just built it out of our own desire for more people to hear this music and to hear the specific musicians that we started with. So in our own tiny corner of the world, we can expose these really amazing musicians."

The festival also features several visual artists, plus food vendors from the Great Dane Brewery and The Dardanelles restaurant. Audience members can bring their own picnics, too -- not to mention musical instruments to sit in on a workshop or join the jam at night's end.

Along with the essential guitar, gypsy swing bands often include upright bass, violin, accordion, mandolin and on rare occasions a vocalist. But there are variations: The Gypsy Rhythm Project, a Chicago band performing Friday night, has more of a Balkan sound, says Delaney-Potthoff.

"It's gypsy jazz, but definitely more on the gypsy side of things," he says. "It's violin; accordion; cimbalom, the hammered dulcimer; and it's a really cultural sound."

Other acts include Chicago's Alfonso Ponticelli, a marvel on guitar. And The Hot Club of Detroit is "a young band of really happening musicians," says Delaney-Potthoff. Harmonious Wail also sponsors an indoor winter gypsy jazz fest (the next one is tentatively scheduled for this February), and at last year's winter fest, the Detroit group "just brought the house down."

All these musicians have Django Reinhardt's legacy to thank, he says.

"We've always felt from the get-go with the Wail that it was the love of Django Reinhardt and the understanding of how that music was put together that was our point of entrance," he says.

"That's what you'll find at the gypsy jazz festival," adds Maggie Delaney-Potthoff. "Alfonso Ponticelli plays the Bart Simpson theme. (Another performer) loves AC/DC and the Beatles. But as long as you have that gypsy rhythm behind it, they can get away with it. This is going on all through Europe now. Everybody's taking it out a little bit, but keeping that core."

IF YOU GO

What: Midwest Gypsy Swing Festival

When: 7-11 p.m. Friday; 2-11 p.m. Saturday

Where: Art in the Barn, 5927 Adams Rd., Fitchburg

Tickets: Friday — $20 day of show, $18 in advance; Saturday — $30 day of show, $28 in advance. Both days: $40 day of show, $38 in advance.

Information and lineup: www.wail.com