Repertoire
Exploration
What is Swing?
In music, “swing” can mean many things. Swing is a style of jazz
that grew from African American roots and the 1920s big-band
traditions in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York City. Swing
music dominated American popular music from the early 1930s
to the mid-40s, and the artists that led swing bands became
international celebrities.
Played by big bands led by such luminaries as fresh and invigorating spirit, and listen deeply
Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and respond to each other with daring and joy,
and Artie Shaw, swing has a distinctive rhythmic we say that they swing. We encourage you to
feel. This feel is achieved by accentuating beats investigate the many rich meanings of “swing”
2 and 4, replacing steady eighth notes with so that you and your students can understand,
lilting, “swinging” eighth notes, and adding experience, and as Armstrong said, “feel” what
accents and syncopation—all anchored by it means to swing.
a walking bass line. This gives the music an • What does the word “swing” mean to you?
undeniable groove or beat, which is hard to (e.g., swing set, swinging back and forth, etc.)
explain in words. As Louis Armstrong famously • Does anybody know what the term “swing”
said, “If you don’t feel it, you’ll never know means in music?
it.” Swing makes people want to get up and
dance, and a whole new kind of dance evolved
along with the music, including dances like the Go Deeper
jitterbug and the Lindy hop. Explore the pioneering artists who developed
the swing style in the 1930s and ’40s through
But swing and other forms of jazz are not the multimedia stories, recordings, and images on
only styles of music that swing; in fact, all music the Timeline of African American Music at
can swing—including orchestral music! When [Link]/genres/swing-bands.
musicians play off each other’s musical ideas in
the moment, approach playing together with a
