This week I started to read the article entitled, “Rock n’ Roll MeetsTthe Popular Press.” As I was reading, I noticed that the article says that people thought rock’n’roll to be just as suggestive as swing, if not more. So, I thought I might look more into swing music and see if it is as “suggestive” as it is said to be.

The first thing I learned about swing style music is that there a shit ton of instruments involved including, drums, brass instruments like trumpets and trombones, as well as stringed instruments like violin and guitar, along with many more. The emphasis for swing is mostly all of the time on the off beat, earlier know as “swing-time rhythm”. The term ‘Swing’ also refers to the feel of the song, and in this case swing means ‘having a strong groove, or drive.’ However, during World War II is when Swing music began to decline because of all of the musicians that were scheduled overseas in the war.

One thing I found very interesting about swing style music, is that while all of these different varieties of instruments are playing god knows what…there was usually a soloist who would take center stage and improvise for practically the entire time the band was playing. I could never even try to imagine completely improvising a solo over a huge band. Whoever had that job had to of been amazing!

I could not find much about how “suggestive” swing music was thought to be. However, I did find a little bit about how surprised people were about the style change from romantic arrangements such as waltzes like they had been used to. Many people of the late 1930’s were taken back by the sound of the popular, edginess and often erratic new swing music style.

In my opinion from what I have heard of both swing and rock’n’roll music, rock’n’roll has swing beat. If i was to look at both musical styles from the world’s perspective now, I would have to say neither are very offensive. Especially if I were looking at early style rock’n’roll, the suggestiveness is very suttle; but probably not to the average person back when rock’n’roll first originated.