Are We Here Yet? Podcast
The Later Days of Big Bands
From the Culture Desk w/ Joshua Michael Stewart
Swing Music & American Pop Culture
Latest Episode
Did the Big Bands end when the Big Band Era was over?
Join co-hosts Joshua Michael Stewart & Scott Graves on a musical look at just what all those Big Band musicians were doing decades after the end of the Big Band Era.
The popular culture phenomenon of swing music did not end when the record deals started drying up. The spectrum and synthesis of styles, the premium musicianship and the comradery between bands and fans continued to the present date.
We bring you more than a dozen recordings in their whole from the seventies to now including mostly musicians and bands still very much alive.
You’ll experience the music of Buddy Rich, Clayton/Hamilton Big Band, Count Basie, The Either Orchestra and folks new the scene like Omar Thomas.
And my co-host put together a larger playlist for those of you who want to swing the night away!
What they say about JMS:
There’s a fearlessness in Joshua Michael Stewart’s poetry—tough, tightly written narratives and monologues about living poor with broken people (some of whom are your closest relatives) in hard times. This heartfelt gritty work reminds me of the hardscrabble accounts of humanity in some of our best poets—the work of Ai, Bruce Weigel, and Linda McCarriston’s landmark book, Eva-Marie. Stewart exercises the courage of truth telling and takes the revenge of real poetic craft. As Bruce Weigel says “Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.” Or as Stewart says, “Poets are the battered spouses of hope.” You can’t help but respect the maker of these streamlined vehicles, for his guts and his unsentimental, vivid poems. -Tony Hoagland
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