Is it possible that Swing could be revived?

[Michael G]

and by that, it would have to be popular not just by the adults, but by the younger generation as well. Seeing how this is the only specific type of jazz that really has a chance, do you think it could happen? If so, how?

[GRUNTERSDAD]

First you would have to educate the young people that Swing is music, that dancing is fun, like when I grew up. That all music doesn't have to be a concert. And that there is more music out there than hip hop and metal. This is not a condemnation of those styles, but they don't lead to dancing. Do schools still sponsor dances??? Someone young will have to tell me. I would hope to see at least some of it come back. About five years ago there was an attempt with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and The Squirrel Nut Zippers I think. And my favorite, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

[caprisun3484]

yea kids (me being one of them) still dance, but it is to Hip-Hop and i'm not talking about good Hip-Hop but stuff that was made specifically for people to dance to.

[GRUNTERSDAD]

Cool, its obvious my age is showing.

[middleman]

It did a few years ago and died a very quick death.......

[AlexM]

A lot of friends I have are way too cool to dance to real music. In fact they try and act way too cool about a lot of things... It sucks. Thats why so much rap is so ego centered, everyone is so much cooler than everyone else, you know?

Pardon me if I offended anyone, but those should know I listen to and enjoy more styles of music than anyone I know, and to credit that, I work at a music store in the day and play drums by night. I listen to and enjoy most of the hip-hop stuff because its so ridiculous, that its hilarious.

Ima buy U a drank.

Anything is possible but straight swing No way! I think some styles die for a reason, they serve their purpose then they need to evolve into something new.

It would have to merge with another genre and have it's own name. ( as if there is not enough now) I think I remember someone coming out with a hit similar to hip hop with a latin swing feel.. mambo # 5 by Lou Bega I think. Good dance tune. But I think he is considered a 1 hit wonder now but something like that may be able to work. I think you would have to have a song similar to mambo #5 with the words ho's and bitches thrown in there for it to be a hit nowadays..(sadly)

[Drummer Karl]

Big Band Swing gets kinda revived through this German guy for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8wvK...elated&search=

Sweet song in my opinion. He is popular over here actually and through this band also young give this kind of music a try.

But in general it is okay that that "pure" Jazz isn`t popular. Nowadays in our society so much of the music you hear in radio is produced to have a quick life...without soul and spirit. It just reflects the attitude of the main stream for music.
There is obviously no place for music like Swing or so...and this is okay. I couldn`t imagine making this music commercially...

Karl

[Deltadrummer]

I don't think swing ever died; nor will swing die because it is a great genre and like opera when it is done right, there is nothing better. It may never make a huge comeback but there is nothing better to dance to than swing, jump blues and rockabilly so it will always have its fans.

There are two great big bands that I like to see in NYC, that being the Birdland Big Band with Tommy Igoe and Kenny Asher, and The Village Vanguard Orchestra with John Riley on drums.

as far as drumming goes, guys like Chick Webb, Papa Jo, Gene Krupa, Sonny Payne, Buddy and Sam Woodyard still have lots of lessons to give in how to play this instrument musically.

Smoothjazz,

My mentor sent me an intresting article recently on this very subject. This is written by a professor from Julliard. This may answer alot of your questions.



As I sit here about to embark on a new school year at the
Juilliard School, where I teach, I would like to try to put the issue of jazz
(America's indigenous art form) and its relationship to popular
music into focus or at least reflect upon and sort out some facts and issues (musical
and personal)that concern me.

From the 1920s through the 1940s, jazz and popular music shared
the great American songbook. Everyone in America knew thousands of the
same tunes, so when a jazz musician like clarinetist Artie Shaw made a record
of Stardust, the 14-year-old song was instantly recognizable to every
American, and, due to the musical quality of Lenny Hayton's exquisite arrangement
and the poignant playing of Shaw, trumpeter Billy Butterfield,
trombonist Jack Jenny and the ensemble, it became an instant hit.

Even still there was always a rift between the sweet bands and
the hotbands. Benny Goodman was hot, Kay Kayser was sweet, Shaw was
hot, Guy Lombardo, sweet. The Black bands like Count Basie had little
access to white American audiences, but they were hot, however several of them,
like Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford courted the hot and sweet
audiences. Glenn Miller modeled his band after both Lunceford and Ellington and
was the most commercially successful at capturing the entire audience. In the
White world Tommy Dorsey was also highly successful at courting both
audiences as were Harry James and Artie Shaw when they added strings.

We had a unified country. We fought the Depression and World War
II together. We were a singular people made up of different races,
nationalities and religions. We all spoke Americanized English,
saw the same movies and sang the same songs. Even the racial chasm was
bridged by our music. America was singing and dancing to the tunes of the
mostly New York Jewish Tin Pan Alley songs put to the rhythms and style that
came out of an even more persecuted outsider community-Black America.

From the 1920s through the 1970s, pop music and jazz shared the
same language and the same base of musicians. A good jazz
musician could play in anyone's band and frequently did. For instance in 1943 trumpeter
Jimmy Maxwell left Benny Goodman's band to do studio work (radio
shows, jingles and popular recordings). He was in great demand from 9 AM until

1 AM every day. He also played 4th trumpet in the NBC Symphony with Arturo
Toscanini, principally so he could play lead trumpet on the
popular material they played. In addition to all this he played in nightclubs with
singers and bands.

Many other musicians followed suit and left the road for studio
work so that they could be home with their growing families. Even some black
musicians were starting to be accepted into this scene-remember,
even baseball wouldn't begin being integrated until 1947.

Jazz musicians spoke the same language as popular singers-only
better. And because of this, they had access to the American airwaves as
long as they performed from the great American songbook in a manner not too
far from the simple tastes of Middle America. Swing pushed down a huge
barrier, so that there was a much greater common ground. After the war, bebop and
other later jazz styles were clearly outside of this shared territory-and
were ignored. When jazz great Charlie Parker died in 1955, most Americans had
no idea who he was. We had changed that much in only ten short years.

The common ground between jazz and popular music lasted into the
early 1970s. By then, popular music had moved away from the songs
and blues-based music and the swing rhythmic feel, so jazz knowledge was
separate from the repertoire and rhythms of pop. Some young musicians could still
do both, but the number of bands that shared a common ground with jazz became
smaller and smaller because the American aesthetic was shifting; not just
the music, but the society's structure, values and aspirations.

The lyrics were no longer about adult love, but about teenage
infatuation. Music was not being aimed at an adult audience
anymore. Record companies openly courted an audience of 12-year-old girls and ignored
their parents and grandparents. 12-year-old girls bought records in large
numbers. Adults did not. 12-year-old girls felt insecure socially and
personally. Pop music could pat them on the back and say, "You're OK. Don't change.
Immediate gratification is good. Mediocrity is where it's at.
Excellence and hard work are for nerds."

Nowadays the gulf is so wide that I don't know even one popular
song of the last 30 years. There is little usage of jazz instruments in pop
music. Although a few pop producers like Quincy Jones who came
out of the jazz world are still around and create jazz-influenced pop, they are
extremely rare and fast becoming extinct. Jazz musicians have
become a world unto themselves, much as classical musicians are.

The fact is that although the media has homogenized America, and
to some extent much of the world, music has become Balkanized with less
crossover than ever before. The swing dance craze of a few years
ago was a small deviation from this. Although it only affected a small portion
of the huge pop market, for a hot minute young pop bands were trying to play
swing, and a few jazzers (like me) were able to capitalize on this and to a
lesser degree reach a young pop audience. The dancers that were
really into it quickly realized that the pop bands were pitifully inferior to
Ellington and Basie, so they sought out jazz bands like mine, but the majority
couldn't tell the difference between jazz musicians playing
authentic swing and rockers trying to capture the superficialities of a retro-swing
culture, and so the audience went where the media told them to go. With no
particular fanfare that short chapter ended. The jazz world
gained a few fans, but reality has set in-once again we must face that jazz is no
longer the heartbeat of American society.

Author Albert Murray's mantra, "Swing is the American
imperative," may have been true for his generation seventy years ago, but Americans no
longer move, talk and make love with our kind of rhythm and
grace. It's a whole new world, and we pre-rockers are nearly irrelevant-as irrelevant to
American society as Beethoven is.

Oh sure, I learned Beethoven's music as a child in the '50s and
a teen in the 60's, and recognized its genius and beauty, but it wasn't
the rhythm of my life or the song in my heart. That was reserved for Sonny
Payne and Philly Joe Jones, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. My
schoolmates turned to a different drummer. Jazz was as foreign as Beethoven to
them. They marched to the Beatles and James Brown. A generation later, jazz
and Beethoven aren't even known to the vast majority of Americans.
Some have heard the names Beethoven and Ellington, but the music doesn't
reverberate in their souls, and for this they are much poorer and
so am I.

That day in 1961 when I discovered the difference between jazz
and other music (in my life comparable to when Adam and Eve realized they
were naked), I knew that I would be forever different from almost everyone I
would ever meet, but then it had a generational component; there were still
survivors from that world. Now the swing survivors are in their
70s or older, or deceased. That world is coming to an end. Sadly. Well, mostly
sadly. I don't miss the racism, anti-Semitism, McCarthyism and other ignorance
of those days, but I do miss the community, humanity, individualism,
simplicity, subtlety, optimism, love and romance. These qualities
live on in our music,and hopefully we can continue to communicate this to future
generations.

I remember going to Duke Ellington's funeral in 1974. When I
walked out of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and looked at the sea of
people flooding Amsterdam Avenue (right next to the hospital where I
was born), I felt this one man and his giant soul connected us all in spirit.
When the funeral procession headed across 125th Street in Harlem, and the
sidewalks were packed with people from all walks of life with
their banners and signs that read, "We love you Duke" I truly had no idea that the
aesthetics I strove for were so deeply imbedded in the American psyche.
Looking back on that day, I am distressed to see what 30 years of rock and roll
(now hip hop, heavy metal, et al) and corporate greed did to the spirit
of our people.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not giving up the fight. It's the
central meaning of my life. I couldn't do anything else, but sometimes I think that
few people understand the alienation that I feel from my neighbors and
television set. Maybe you feel some of that too.

In the 1970s Jimmy Maxwell used to refer to himself and his swing
contemporaries as dinosaurs. He once told me that I would never
know what it felt like to walk up Broadway in the early '40s when he was
playing with Benny Goodman. I don't remember his exact words, but he loved
the closeness that everyone he met felt toward him. It wasn't the power of
fame; it was that he felt connected. Many of the things he loved in life were
of value to the average man. The American Dream was intact. I remember
thinking even then, "What a feeling that must have been."

Maybe I am no different from any aging human being who longs for
the world of his youth. You start out as the youngest musician in the
band, and by the time you reach your fifties, you are one of the oldest. Instead
of being the student, you have become the teacher, the last connection to a
world of aesthetics that will soon become a modern Atlantis. We believe
that the Atlantan society happened and was great, but it is forever lost
and exists only in our mythology. No one alive knows what those people were
about, but we know they were great.
Regardless of what I see on television, on the Internet and in
my daily life, I cling to my mythical world and all its best values. I am
unshakable. I belong to a diverse subculture called jazz
musicians. The world doesn't particularly want us. After all, we challenge people to look
deep inside themselves and strive for excellence-not always a comfortable
feeling. I know my idealized world (the one I learned from Jimmy Maxwell
and Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong) will never exist here on earth,
but there is something built in the human spirit that keeps trying, even
though the situation is un-winnable. And so it comes down to passing on
this wonderful legacy that was handed to me, the one that I was so lucky to
have inherited from my elders and betters. I'm not just talking about the
music. I mean the love and sense of dignity and humility that the music embodies
and that these giants lived. Maybe I can touch a few lives with this
message, and maybe some of the others who have also been touched will pass
the message on. Thank God for small victories and the hope they engender in
us, and thank all my brothers and sisters who care. Happy Labor Day, and
as the great jazz composer BillyStrayhorn use to say,



Forever onward and upward,

David Berger
David Berger & the Sultans of Swing play Tuesday nights at
Birdland in NYC.
Widely known for his transcriptions of Ellington music, his
compositions and arrangements are played by jazz bands all over the world. He
resides in NYCWhere he teaches at the Juilliard School.

[GRUNTERSDAD]

Quoted from above.
Oh sure, I learned Beethoven's music as a child in the '50s and
a teen in the 60's, and recognized its genius and beauty, but it wasn't
the rhythm of my life or the song in my heart. That was reserved for Sonny
Payne and Philly Joe Jones, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. My
schoolmates turned to a different drummer. Jazz was as foreign as Beethoven to
them. They marched to the Beatles and James Brown. A generation later, jazz
and Beethoven aren't even known to the vast majority of Americans.
Some have heard the names Beethoven and Ellington, but the music doesn't
reverberate in their souls, and for this they are much poorer and
so am I.

All the more reason for supporting music in the school system. If you don't play an instrument you should. If you do you, should play in either the school band, orchestra, or pep band or something and learn a little history of music as well as a greater knowledge of all music not just pop music.

[Deltadrummer]

The problem with the education system is that it has not valued American music historically. Every university should have a program in jazz, rock, and other popular music as well as electric guitar and drum set, yet few do even today. They lost a whole generation of musicians, if you wonder why music is in such a pitiful state, it is the failure of education. There have been exceptions and it is slowly changing but when I went to college, the halls were filled with more ignoramuses than learned professionals.

[somexone75]

Swing is on its way back, but it is mixed with a few other genres at the moment. ska = swing reggae, funk and some good ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll