Word: swingingly
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Then again, this year the Council has not invited a Violent Femmes clone to Springfest. Instead we have Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, whose music tries to revive swing--which, as a popular music, has been dormant for some 50 years now. With the help of several similar bands--most notably Squirrel Nut Zipper and the Brian Setzer Orchestra--and the applause of countless conservative culture warriors, they've been fairly successful. However, it's worth asking if their music is really so different from that of the Violent Femmes of the world...
...said that jazz is the American music, but it's rarely explained why. If democracy is the rule of the poor, jazz is a uniquely democratic music--it was created by the poor, and, at least in its youth, was played primarily for the poor. Also, the rise of swing roughly corresponded to the emergence of two powerful popularizers: radio and the recording industry. As a result, swing was the first genuinely popular music--its appeal transcended class, gender and race...
...curious thing about swing, though, is that it was popular and poignant simultaneously, at once low and high, democratic and aristocratic. At its best, swing wedded a danceable rhythm to challenging harmonics and inspired improvisation, producing a single musical form capable of pleasing aesthetes along with everyone else. Swing was the ancients' mixed regime--not in speech, but in music...
With Penn State and Harvard tied at 2-2 a short while later, the Nittany Lions went on an imposing 7-0 run, fueled by four kills from Penn State freshman swing hitter Carlos Guerra...
...letting me be me," Lynne recalls. That was no easy job. Lynne is a native Virginian raised in Alabama who came to Nashville at 18 to sing country standards. Her bright, diamond-hard voice attracted immediate attention. She recorded five albums for four different labels, weaving torch, twang, swing and blues into genre-crossing numbers that were occasionally brilliant but often jarring. None connected with mainstream buyers. So in 1998 Lynne's exile took her to Palm Springs, Calif., where freedom from the industry grinder gave her room to find her voice. The songs that became I Am sound liberated...