Hi Jazz Fans,
One of my motivating ideas of late has been looking for ways to involve more non-dancers at events and dances. It gets more people out and paying money to see live music, buy drinks, dress cool, and generally help support all the cool stuff we're interested in. So as not to ramble in one really long blog post about this, I'm gonna try and break it up into a few to make it more digestible.
1. PERFORMANCES
I was part of a really interesting discussion on Memorial Day with a bunch of dancers at a Post-camp Jitterbug BBQ about that weekend's competitions. That in addition to Mary Freitag's recent blog-post about competitions in the lindy hop scene and the further discussion on Jerry Almonte's repost of it sparked an idea to make for more interesting, and more fair competitions, while drawing more people and money into the scene.
One of the coolest things about the Jump Session show (IMO) is that it draws in the public. More and more weekends are trying to plan some kind of show as part of the weekend's entertainment because, frankly, it's a fun idea. The drawbacks to doing a
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Hi Jazz Fans,
When I wanted to progress past being an intermediate level dancer, I realized that the next step in dancing was to understand the music, and through this process I started to discover why it was that the really good dancers didn't dance to certain songs or go out to hear certain bands. There's a certain feeling in swing music that doesn't exist in bop or jump blues or 50's Basie or groovy jazz. It's really hard to describe in a sentence, but when you discover it, you've got it forever and it's one of the most exciting revelations that life has to offer (IMHO anyway).
Whenever I dance to or listen to a live band, I judge it with a critical ear - I pick apart what I'm hearing and judge what each player's style is doing to add to or take away from the swing of the band. Over the next several days, I'm going to write about some of the things that I listen for in dance music. If you're just learning to dance or are looking to step up to the next level, I hope this will help you in your quest as you search for
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Who the heck am I? - My name is Glenn Crytzer. I'm the leader of and guitarist/banjo player in the Syncopators and the Blue Rhythm Band, both based out of Seattle, WA (http://www.syncopators.net). My groups play jazz from the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's and aim to achieve as authentic a sound as possible through authentic playing techniques, minimal amplification etc.
What's this blog going to be about? Old Jazz. It's not a player's forum, it's a place for me to post my rantings and ravings about different bands, recordings, and players that I like, and to talk about listening to and playing jazz.
cheers,Glenn
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