Swing (jazz Performance Style) - Description

Description

Like the term "groove," which is used to describe a cohesive rhythmic "feel" in a funk or rock context, the concept of "swing" can be hard to define. Indeed, some dictionaries use the terms as synonyms: "Groovy ... enotes music that really swings." The Jazz in America glossary defines it as "when an individual player or ensemble performs in such a rhythmically coordinated way as to command a visceral response from the listener (to cause feet to tap and heads to nod); an irresistible gravitational buoyancy that defies mere verbal definition."

As a performance technique, swing has been called, "the most debated word in jazz." When jazz performer Cootie Williams was asked to define it, he joked, "Define it? I'd rather tackle Einstein's theory!" Benny Goodman, the 1930s-era bandleader nicknamed the "King of Swing," called swing "free speech in music," whose most important element is "the liberty a soloist has to stand and play a chorus in the way he feels it". His contemporary Tommy Dorsey gave a more ambiguous definition when he proposed that "Swing is sweet and hot at the same time and broad enough in its creative conception to meet every challenge tomorrow may present." Boogie-woogie pianist Maurice Rocco argues that the definition of swing "is just a matter of personal opinion."

Jeff Pressing's 2002 article claims that a "feel" is "a cognitive temporal phenomenon emerging from one or more carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns, characterized by ... perception of recurring pulses, and subdivision of structure in such pulses, ... perception of a cycle of time, of length 2 or more pulses, enabling identification of cycle locations, and ... effectiveness of engaging synchronizing body responses (e.g. dance, foot-tapping)."

Treadwell concludes his introduction/definition:

We could go on and on. And on. But we would travel only further along the Road To Nowhere. What is Swing? Perhaps the best answer, after all, was supplied by the hep-cat who rolled her eyes, stared into the far-off and sighed, "You can feel it, but you just can't explain it. Do you dig me?" —Treadwell (1946), p.10

A sense of "swing" for jazz artists has analogies in the similarly idealised but indefinable notions of "funk" in funk music, or "flow" in the hip hop scene and music. The notion of a special "feel" (rather than a set of rules) that defines the musical style is common in non-Western music, especially the African tradition. "Flow is as elemental to hip hop as the concept of swing is to jazz." Just as the jazz concept of "swing" involves performers deliberately playing behind or ahead of the beat, the hip-hop concept of flow is about "funking with one's expectations of time" – that is, the rhythm and pulse of the music. "Flow is not about what is being said so much as how one is saying it."