Swing is one of the most important elements in jazz. For a period, it was in fact synonymous with jazz. Swing also bears a multitude of musical meanings. It can be a rhythm, it can be a subgenre, it can be a dance, it can be the energy of a performance.
So what did Duke Ellington mean when he said, “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing?” – Let’s find out.
Swing as a rhythm
Swing is a rhythm that underlies everything from the drum beat to the melody and solos. It can also be elusive to define. Put shallowly, a swing rhythm is a long-short pair of notes. The long-short, long-short, long-short pattern continues throughout. You can imagine the pounding rhythm on a drummer’s cymbal…
The challenge is trying to define this further. Errors have been made in musical notation trying to attribute rhythms of Classial music as “swing”. You see, in Classical music there are pairs of long and short notes. They don’t sound like swing though. Swing has a nuance that’s best learned by listening and playing jazz, not directly gleaned from sheet music.
Bert Ligon’s Jazz Theory Resources describes a fascinating bit of testing where computers analyzed the precise swing rhythms of jazz masters such as Oscar Peterson, Sonny Stitt, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and more. The study found that the swing rhythm has a long note to short note ratio of 58:42. That’s not something I would like to count out every time I play jazz!
The swing rhythm is felt, it changes depending on the tempo, it is enhanced by articulation (little details in how notes are emphasized and played). Like a language, fluent speakers think little of grammar or their accent, they just talk. The same is for jazz musicians that swing. Yes, the rhythm is nuanced as difficult to define, though in the music of an expert, it is as effortless as speaking.
Swing as a style of jazz
The swing rhythm (and its associated articulations and nuances) was a critical part of early jazz. It was part of what made jazz sound like jazz. Not having swing in a jazz piece was like dividing by zero, it didn’t make sense.
Around the mid 1930s the big band style of jazz became increasingly popular in the United States. Artists of this style include Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Jimmie Lunceford. This style of music became referred to as “swing”. Jazz was swing and swing was jazz.
Swing as a dance
The swing bands of the 1930s and 1940s didn’t just play music for listening, they played music for dancing! Jazz was a very social music performed in dance halls across the country. It was common for a jazz band to be found anywhere from a high school prom to an expensive New York spot like the Cotton Club (where Duke Ellington gained much of his fame). All of these venues’ featured bands supported dancing.
The upbeat jazz was the perfect accompaniment for a fun, sometimes wild style of dancing, called “swing dancing”. Swing dancing has much of its origins in the Black community, and it later spread across social strata. With special steps like the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, and the Charleston, swing dancing was an exciting craze that stretched across the 1930s and 1940s culture.
Swing as an energy
Swing propels the music forward. It goes beyond a rhythm; it has all the technical details (articulations) and emotional power to define a genre’s sound. Swing was not limited to big band music. Swing encompassed all of jazz for decades regardless of ensemble size. Miles Davis swung, Nat King Cole swung, Erroll Garner swung. Swing was more than a rhythm, more than a subgenre of jazz; it was the energy behind jazz itself!
Around the late 1950s and early 1960s, jazz musicians increasing experimented making jazz that didn’t have a clear swing beat. Bossa Nova, Boogaloo, funk & fusion took the improvisational and structural approaches to jazz, but placed them on different drumbeats or rhythmic feels. These types of jazz are still as compelling as swing, though they don’t swing in the strictest sense. They do, however, maintain the brilliant approach to composition & improvisation that their musical ancestors did. This is because most of the musicians that made these new types of jazz started with a deep understanding and ability to swing, and they took that energy with them!
So what is swing in jazz? It’s a rhythm, a dance, and energy, and a foundation to a diverse and amazing style of music that’s existed for generations. There are still many jazz artists today that utilize the swing beat in their music. This playlist highlights the best of this generation’s jazz artists that still use swing as a foundation for their music. Listen, follow, and dive in to some stellar new artists and recordings! You can also learn more about swing & other building blocks of jazz with our course, Jazz Unlocked!