Where did swing music originate from?

Answer 1

Swing didn't have a single source. It grew out of a combination of jazz, show music, Tin Pan Alley, and spirituals with added elements from Classical Music and even klezmer.

Jazz was performed mostly by small groups and relies heavily on improvisation; i.e. the musicians follow a basic melodic line but add their own interpretations as they perform. Generally no two performances of the same tune would be the same. In the 1920s various orchestra leaders such as Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington formed larger orchestras playing arrangements where most of the parts were written out in advance, similar to classical music, but with breaks where individual musicians would play improvised solos.

Black bandleaders such as Ellington, Count Basie, Bennie Moten, Fletcher Henderson and others incorporated elements of spirituals into their music. One of the most important aspects was using instruments to imitate the call-and-response form of many spirituals. In call-and-response each voice in the choir sings the melody in sequence, and each adds a variation to the prior voice. Orchestrally this was accomplished by assigning variations of the melody to each group of instruments; for example the melody might be first played by the trumpets, then the reeds, then the trombones, with each adding different interpretations.

The music of the black bands travelled up the Mississippi river to clubs in Kansas City, and eventually to Chicago and New York where it was heard by musicians such as Benny Goodman and the Gershwin brothers. They added influences from classical and show music. Many of those musicians were also Jewish and brought influences from their religious music in the same way that Christian musicians brought influences from spirituals.

While many bandleaders contributed to popularizing swing, Benny Goodman can arguably be said to have brought it to the mainstream. He had studied classical and jazz clarinet as a child in Chicago and was heavily influenced by various black bands whose music reached that city in the 1920s. In particular he took many arrangements from Fletcher Henderson's band and introduced them to white audiences who were unlikely to have heard them in those horribly segregated days. By 1935 Goodman's band had become a favorite of many young listeners and dancers. Within a year or so swing was the dominant form of popular music in the US, lasting until WWII.

Answer 2

Swing dance came from partnered Charleston which was popular in the 1920s. I"m not sure where it started, but I know when it started it was popular over in Europe as well as in America.

Answer 3

It was created In Harlem. (Where most of the dance was originated)