Swing Changes

"Bands were playing, people were dancing, the music business was booming. It was the big-band era, and swing was giving a new shape and sound to American culture. In Swing Changes, David Stowe looks at New Deal America through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing - over race, politics, its own cultural status, the role of women - mirrored those played out in the larger society. In its simultaneous acceptance and challenge of contemporary attitudes and stereotypes, swing reflected broader cultural impulses at the same time that it modified them.". "Although…