Swing music

Marc Copland is a tremendous jazz pianist with a special ability to create stunning atmospheres with unrugged textures. Having collaborated in the recent years with the virtuous bassist Gary Peacock (Now This and Tangents) and the late guitarist John Abercrombie (39 Steps and Up and Coming), Copland never turned his back to his personal projects, which usually overflow with melodic sensibility and strong rhythmic discernment. The compositions included in Better By Far, his newest work, were…

dances of the seventies were all about disco music. Disco music features soaring vocals over a steady beat, an eighth note or sixteenth note hi-hat with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a syncopated bass line. During the seventies, disco clubs, which were very common, were filled with disco dancers. Common dance moves included “The Hustle,” “The Bump,” “YMCA,” and many others. Detailed description of dance and the music: Disco dance is moving to music with your own style, while usually…

One such example can be found in the Rogers-Astaire classic Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936). In the final number of the film, “Never Gonna Dance,” after an arduous off-and-on romantic connection to Penny (Ginger Rogers), Lucky (Fred Astaire) sings pleadingly to her in order to “win her back”. This musical number…

Electoral College: A Flawed System For generations, a man who holds more potential power than anyone else on this imposing earth has been ordained his power by a small group of 538. This system has been continually tarnished and contorted until it arranged itself to the system of today; a warped empty shell of good intentions gone wrong. It is of my opinion that the system we have today is fallacious and must be removed with great haste. Once an idea on a path paved with good intentions, at some…

“To those who understand, no explanation needed. To those who do not, no explanation possible.” - Unknown source. From the battlefields across the globe to the football fields in our backyards, color guard has an incredible and colorful history that continues to flourish and grow with changing times. Color guard has very cut and dried origins. However, the point when it began to morph into the color guard we have today does not have a definite date or any single individual credited with…

Western Swing Music From the 1930’s to the 1950’s a new genre had taken the spotlight. Consisting of country, jazz, polka, mariachi, pop, and blues, Western Swing had become very popular in the state of Texas. Known for dance music, Western Swing has continued to play an important role in Texas history. People of all cultures were influenced by this type of western music. It created joy, as well as energy to Texas. In the early 1900’s Bob Wills, who later became known the “King of Western…

My taste in music could best be described as electronic swing, since it is not quite EDM, electronic dance music, and isn't exactly jazz. It's the perfect mix, which presents you with a type of music that resembles art more than a simple melody. Often mistaken for nu-disco, electronic swing creates a modern and dance-floor focused sound that is more readily accessible to the modern ear but that also retains the feeling of live brass and the energetic excitement of the early swing recordings.…

Jazz is a music genre that has characteristic qualities like swing, interaction by a group, slow beats and has its origins in New Orleans. Jazz came into existence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jazz has a fusion of African, European and American beats and instruments hence making it a unique type of music. During that time, New Orleans was the only place in the “New world” that allowed black people to own drums. This greatly contributes to the rise of Jazz in that they were able to…

Scott DeVeaux is a professor and an author who specialized in jazz and American music. He is currently teaching at the University of Virginia. His book The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History that was published in 1997 had won the American Book Award, an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award, the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society, and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research. His other published books and articles include Jazz, which was co-author with…

Coined as ‘hot’ music, jazz grew out of the colorful city of New Orleans and reached widespread popularity in the 1920’s (Gioioa 30). The African American community was largely responsible for the creation of jazz music, however influences can be seen from many different ethnic groups and communities. A combination of the blues, ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley songs can be heard when listening to jazz and its improvisational style set it apart from preexisting genres. Creole of Color Brass Bands…