Groups

Swing band

A swing band was usually led by a virtuoso instrumentalist and provided dance music, a style which started in the 1930s. Listen to an example by the Glenn Miller Band. 

   While swing suggests a reasonably fast tempo, the reality was that swing bands played music of differing tempos. On the last page you heard a blues played by a swing band. These bands were in their heyday in the late 1930s and ’40s and through the Second World War years. Much of the music portrayed a romantic and rather reflective mood as young people often met briefly and then went off to war. Here is one of the most famous of these band pieces, 'Moonlight Serenade'.     If you listen carefully you will hear the melody being played by the reed section of saxophones, and accompanied by muted brass, a sound quite distinctive at this time.