swing music

Jazz style popular in the 1930s-40s. A big-band dance music, it relied on fixed arrangements, rather than improvisation. It used a simple harmonic base of varying tempo from the rhythm section (percussion, guitar, piano), harmonic brass and woodwind sections (sometimes strings), and a superimposed solo melodic line from, for example, trumpet, clarinet, or saxophone. Exponents included Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt (the first European jazz musician to influence US players), and Glenn Miller, who introduced jazz to a mass white audience.