{"id":1222,"date":"2010-05-24T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/05\/it-dont-mean-a-thing-if-it-aint-got-that-swing-music-for-mondays\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T19:02:43","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T00:02:43","slug":"it-dont-mean-a-thing-if-it-aint-got-that-swing-music-for-mondays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/05\/it-dont-mean-a-thing-if-it-aint-got-that-swing-music-for-mondays.html","title":{"rendered":"It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing (Music for Mondays)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>Tis is the season of school music concerts. Our oldest son, an eighth grader, \u00a0loves playing the upright bass in his middle school jazz band. As a parent, I find it \u00a0such a joy to watch 25 awkward middle school students, most of them boys, transform into confident jazz drummers, saxophone players, trumpeters and bassists. Much of what they play is swing music, a form of jazz music that became popular in the 1930s. The music, has fans worldwide, speaks to the sheer exuberance for life \u00a0we can feel when we begin to count our blessings.<\/p>\n

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One of the best parts of being a parent is that our children take us places. I never had much of an interest in jazz music, or specifically in swing music, until our son developed an enthusiasm for it. Here is a clip from the 2004 Japanese movie \u201cSwing Girls\u201d that gives a sense of the transforming power of this music. In the movie, which won seven Japanese Academy Awards, a group of delinquent high school students from rural Yamagata prefecture form a jazz band. \u00a0Here is a clip of their first efforts to learn to play swing music.<\/p>\n