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What is Swing and why is it called that?
THE SWING AND ITS ETERNAL BOUNCE
What is the Swing...? Imagine it as one long "bounce". Feel it, experience it, first of all, as a bounce of music that repeats evenly within the song you are dancing to.
Then think of it as a geographical bounce from the deep South of the blacks, from the cotton plantations to the West and East coasts of the United States: where the jazz father was born, with African and Caribbean blood in the veins of musicians and dancers. Follow him as he crosses the ocean, bouncing back to us, to Europe ready to welcome him as the youngest musical son, wild, engaging, very likeable. Follow its time course. Let it dictate the times. The diffusion swinging and constant diffusion at the end of the 1920s, the explosion between the 1930s and 1940s, in overwhelming waves, as tall and big as the big bands that produced them. The inevitable oblivion, due to the looming sadness of war and then, on the return from such tragedy, the competition of other styles, other dances, other freedom.
Until the new bounce, the rediscovery, the big comeback, this time global, with no more obstacles, a century after when it all started.
Follow the rhythmic impulse that makes you get up from your chair and throw yourself onto the dance floor.
That's what Swing is: the impossibility of standing still when the pulse rises, the bounce, that mind and body express in unison.
THE SWINGING OF SWING MUSIC
Swing from English literally translates into rocking. Although it changes often, and that sense of swinging can be achieved in many different ways, it is not that one way makes one song more swinging than the other.
Swing - dancers say - is only noticeable when it's not there.
When it is there, however, it is an excellent stress-reliever: endorphins in a thousand, a desire to socialise, a certain connection even between perfect strangers. Try it to believe it.
Musically , swing is distinguished by a characteristic movement of the rhythm section e per un tipo di execution of notes con un ritmo "saltellante". Per dirla in maniera semplice, è una sorta di pulsazione, un rimbalzo come abbiamo detto, una cadenza ritmica che continua a portare avanti il ritmo, come se ci fosse un po’ di ritardo su alcuni battiti e come se altri battiti fossero più veloci.
In jazz jargon, 'to swing' (or to swing) means to be musically expressive and communicative: the swing, or glide, is created by placing the emphasis on the upbeat, rather than the beat. And so, if in a normal folk song of the time in 4/4 the feeling will be this: ÚN dù TRÉ quà, in a swing song in 4/4 the feeling will be different, just by shifting the accent: ùN DÚ trè QUÁ.
A definition for the more experienced? " Swing is a rhythmic impulse produced by factors of various kinds, including above all the accentuation on the weak times of the measure and the well-defined rhythmic scansion". To summarise, in practice, triplet notes are played on binary time signatures: for example, two quavers (one-eighth notes) will be played as a triplet of quavers (three eighths played for the duration of a quarter) with the first two notes tied. The accent is preferentially given on the upbeat.
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