Whirl-Y-Gig is the longest running world music dance club in London. It was set up by Ros Madden as an experiment of the Association of Humanistic Psychology in 1981, who passed it on to the capable hands of DJ Monkey Pilot four years later. Ros Madden died on 20 October 2011 in Luton. Monkey Pilot plays a wide range of music in the club, primarily world music/dance music fusions, but also many other genres. Whirl-y-Gig is hailed as one of the central venues for people from London's alternative community.
Whirl-Y-Gig also appears at festivals, showing both live bands, who are mixed on the spot by DJ Monkey Pilot, or DJ sessions. They appear at such festivals as Beautiful Days, the Whitby Musicport Festival and the Sunrise Celebration. They have also appeared at the short-lived Canterbury Fayre and also at Womad Reading. They also run their own record label called Whirl-Y-Music and are organizing their own festival, the Whirl-Y-Fayre in August 2013.
Whirl-Y-Gig's have featured artists such as Banco De Gaia, System 7, Dreadzone, Astralasia, Eat Static, Loop Guru, Baka Beyond, Transglobal Underground, Another Green World and Kamel Nitrate.