Swing Music Essay

Since everything has a start, the best way to explain anything, for the least amount of confusion, is to start at the very beginning. My question for the history books, is where did swing music come from? After research, since the United States is a relatively young country, I decided to extend my question to include the influence that the world has had on the development of swing music in the United States. The main source that will be used to discuss “swing” includes When Swing was the Thing by John R. Tumpak, this book is perfect for this paper because it talks about the rise of swing and the famous bandleaders, that from 1929-1935, worked to get swing popular. Another highly mentioned source is Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture by Lewis A. Erenburg, this author does a great job of setting the Jazz ground work that began with the band leaders in the previous book that paved the way for swing to really take off. One of the lesser used sources in this paper includes that of Big Band Jazz in the Black West Virginia by Christopher Wilkinson, author Christopher Wilkinson helps to add more depth to the discussion, in that he brings other backgrounds into the picture to more fully develop the background of how the music from around the world meshed as he brings the …show more content…
Bandleaders began looking to African-American arrangers, their instrumental styles, and uses of the instruments as a way of keeping the audience demanded jazz-oriented dance music. As the audience for Big Band swing kept growing so did the diversity of the audience, including blacks, whites, and even European immigrants so as different cultures came together Big Band Swing kept getting tweaked with each cultural addition. Overall the many different avenues of black, Latin, White, American, and European music influences began to merge when Swing in the form of Big Band Jazz Swing hit its highest