The rythm that marked an Era

It is true that Argentina has Tango, Brazil Samba and Bossa Nova and Spain owns Flamenco; but Big Band is one hundred percent Newyorker. Much more than music transmitting feelings or making us remember the atmosphere it gives a country, its people and a time period, this movement doesn’t understand borders. 

However, this dynamic tune is not composed only by musicians that play trombones, trumpets, clarinets, percussions or saxophones. Its diverse ramifications are only the beginning of the history told by various voices that let a mark on a generation, and more than that, on the entire world. 

 

 

 

A story without precedents

 It all dates back to the decade of 1920, people were tired of the talk regarding the great depression and was eager to forget their personal conflicts as well as the chaotic reality that represented their daily life.  However, this golden time period made the gin flow, the moral become looser and people gathered in places where the music wouldn’t stop.  

The expansion of Big Band has its origins in the Jazz from New Orleans, at the moment it counted with ten or eleven performers, later, it would go even further, having up to twenty musicians. In time these new bands would produce changes in their musical arrangements and the New York style became popular, as  consequence, Swing made its apparition in the mid 20’s. Fletcher Henderson was its main expositor. Since 1921, Henderson is the creator of several records that have up to nine instruments, it is until 1926 that instruments had been doubled or tripled, granting the Big Band with a completely new thrive. 

 

 

 

 

Originally presented as a dance band, Henderson’s group eventually began to fix in Jazz with Blues influences. With Louis Armstrong in the trumpet, Henderson began to take part as band orchestrator, creating the first Big Band genre. After enjoying a moderate success with his own band, Henderson struck gold in 1935; when he began to work with musicians like Benny Goodman. Despite the arrangements that Henderson had used in his previous project, the talented performance that the Goodman band achieved where superb, unlike Henderson’s. They became the most popular band of Jazz/Swing in the United States. Although Goodman’s band was extremely popular throughout its first tour, the broadcast in the radio stations were very late at night for those in the East coast, contrary to the West Coast, who knew exactly who they were, meeting with exuberant praises. During the summer of 1935 at the Los Angeles Palomar, Benny Goodman built in a wink the era of Big Band. All the people who saw this legacy being born and those who managed to contribute to the definition of this type of music have left several talents that achieved to transmit us their essence until this day, and despite the fact that in Mexico we have several voices, one manages to stand out from the rest, making this, his stage. 

 

 

 

Frank Sinatra

The winner of several awards and with an artistic career, which was shrouded in controversy, Frank Sinatra is regarded as one of the most iconic male voices of the 20th century .

The origins of his career back to his childhood, where accompanied by a piano and imitating several clothing artists of that time, begins to sing in a tavern which was owned by his father.

Professionally the Sinatra´s career is divided into three parts, the first covers the period of 1940 where accompanied by famous orchestras of the hand of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey  did the first performances and recordings of discs.

The second stage and considered by many critics as its golden age was accompanied by the Capitol label where he recorded: Come Fly With Me, Only The Lonely and Songs For Swingin Lovers.

La third stage comes in the Decade of the 60´s in which opens his record company in which popularizes the topics My way, Strangers in the Night and New York New York.

 

 

 

Paul Anka

Born in Ottawa Canada and nationalized American is a musician and composer who has his origins in New York where he did his first casting for ABC in 1957.

His first success obtained it with Diana´s song, but its greatest musical virtue and perhaps its consolidation has it by having made the adaptation to Frank Sinatra’s My Way a theme which his original version came in French. 

Anka has become one of the most successful composers of recent times, checking of  this is the co-ownership of the theme “This is it”, which Michael Jackson managed, but due to the death of this last one Anka was able to interpret it with him in the virtual form at the festival de Viña del Mar.

Text: Erick Zamora ± Photo: Rodrigo Marín / UNI PADERBORN / REVIVE MUSI / WPD / BP / DrMacro / Enterprises