How are you?
Following the last week, I am going to
start my 49th lecture.
I had conducted music lectures at Art
Collage JANG in Seoul, South Korea every Saturday from March 2015 to December
2017.
I am going to introduce the lecture by
the lecture’s order every Saturday.
The 5th theme of “The history of Jazz”
I will introduce this week is “Swing”. It is a summary of the contents of “49th
ACJ Music Academy, The history of Jazz: 5. Swing”, which was introduced on May
28, 2016. In
this lecture, I will introduce about the background for moving jazz’s main
stage from Chicago to New York, the Swing from a social perspective, and the
formation of Big Bands and the representative musicians in Swing.
Jazz,
which started in New Orleans and moved to Chicago, again moves its main stage
to New York. The
most critical factor in moving Chicago jazz musicians to New York was the
development of broadcasts. At that time, most of the major broadcasting
stations were located in New York, and the musicians' fixed appearances in the
broadcast program guaranteed their bright future.
Swing
was one of the most popular dance music at the time, and especially in the late
1930s, the places where the Swing was played a lot were dance halls. New York's
dance halls were places where the capital gathered as well as the people of the
middle and the above classes to dance and enjoy entertainment, unlike the
Storyville in New Orleans.
Swing Dance
In
the early 1930s, the United States was in great economic crisis due to the
Great Depression, but because of the President Roosevelt's New Deal policy, its
economy began to recover from the mid-1930s. In
addition, as the United States participated in the Second World War from the end
of the 1930s, they became the world's leading position, and as a result, the
economy of the United States became booming.
The
first place where jazz stared in New York was Harlem. Originally Harlem was a
region developed for wealthy whites. But
in the 1900s, the blacks began moving into Harlem, and before 1930, it was
completely occupied by the blacks, and then jazz from Chicago naturally settled
in the area. Musicians
who came from Chicago to New York to get a job at the broadcasting stations
began playing around Harlem's clubs.
The
most prominent musician of them was Louis Armstrong, one of the musicians who
settled on Swing, and in particular, had a profound influence on the
popularization of Swing. He established the position of Swing as a dance music
and contributed greatly to spreading it to people.
Louis Armstrong
By the way, in the
popularization of the Swing, Big Bands played a big role, and the attempt for
the Big Bands was made by ‘Fletcher Henderson’ in the 1920s. Fletcher
Henderson's Big Band greatly matured from the midst to the late 1920s, and the
band's activities later became a musical example to other big bands.
Fletcher Henderson
The
Big Band means a kind of ‘organization’ or ‘arrangement’ of the band and is
composed mainly of piano, various rhythm instruments, and wind instruments. It
is common that several performers play solo, and the whole part of the band
plays other part, and a leader conducts and directly participates in the music
playing. The
Swing by Big Band organization was the most popular music in the United States
from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s.
Big Band
As
the President Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, implemented the New Deal
policy, the economy gradually began to recover, and then Swing became popular
in public.
The
reason why Swing became so popular was that the public, suffering from the
Great Depression, wanted pleasant and hopeful music, and that was Swing.
Therefore, most of the Swing music at the time consisted of Major Scale of
bright feeling or at least showed tendency to start with Major Scale.
In
addition to ‘Louis Armstrong’, ‘Benny Goodman’ and ‘Duke Ellington’ are
representative musicians of the Swing era.
Born in 1909 in Chicago, clarinet
player Benny Goodman was a musician who has greatly contributed to the
development of the Swing. After Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman was one of
the most popular musicians in the United States throughout the 1930s, and his
song “Sing, Sing, Sing” made a huge success.
Benny Goodman
Duke
Ellington was a musician who majored in art, and has been evaluated by later
scholars as “advancing the world's popular music by at least 20 years."
Ellington was very musically talented and led one big band without major
changes over 40 years of music career. He succeeded at the front of the music
scene, serving as music director at Harlem's "Cotton Club", where
only whites could be its guests.
Duke Ellington
You can also review this lecture from
following media.
Next week, I will introduce you “Vocal
Jazz” as the 6th theme of “The history of Jazz” lectures.
Thank you.
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