'Swingo de Mayo'

MOSES LAKE — As Duke Ellington said, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Friday night the Moses Lake High School jazz bands proved the Duke was right.

The annual swing dance is a fundraiser for the school’s music booster club. The money is used to buy and replace equipment and music, help with travel costs and pay expenses for music program activities.

The evening featured four different groups, all part of the MLHS band program. The jazz bands played everything from Ellington’s 1931 classic – that named a musical era and a whole jazz genre, actually – to Dizzy Gillespie to Benny Goodman. “From the ’20s to the ’50s,” said MLHS band instructor Michael Divelbiss.

The swing dance has been around long enough that it’s kind of unclear how long it’s been around. Divelbiss estimated it’s been a jazz band tradition for at least a decade.

“Every year we try and bring in a guest artist,” he said. For 2017 that was Dr. Vern Sielert, director of jazz studies at the University of Idaho and coordinator of the university’s Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. He’s also a pretty good trumpet player, as he proved on the bandstand. Sielert joined the band for a number of solos, and a couple of duets with jazz band players.

Solos too are a tradition of swing music, and saxophone and trumpet players, trombone players and drummers, pianists and the xylophone player all took the spotlight sometime during the evening.

Friday was May 5, which didn’t pass unnoticed. “We decided to call it ‘Swingo de Mayo,’” Divelbiss said. The Latin influence on jazz was recognized with some bossa nova numbers on the program.

Cinco de Mayo influenced the menu, too, which featured nachos with cheese and olives.

The music ranged from the relaxed vibe of Count Basie – the 1950s Basie – to some classic Glenn Miller tunes to a little Lionel Hampton.

The swing sound is part of the Great American Songbook, tunes from Gershwin and Porter and Mercer, and is part of the jazz repertoire of mid-20th-century America. Of course swing music is dance music, and of course there was a dance floor. One couple came properly dressed for the occasion, with the guy in a zoot suit right out of 1943.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.