Upswing

Judge argues that cities used to promote accountability and friendship. Back in the old days, Americans had “third places” — coffee shops, dance halls, corner stores — in which civility was forced to occur because people lived so close to one another. But then architects and city planners created, with the evil suburbs, zones of anonymity and isolation. Judge quotes longtime Washingtonians recalling life in the District of Columbia to illustrate his point: “When I was growing up,” notes one, “everyone within a five-mile radius knew who I was. If I did anything wrong, it got back to my mother before I did.”

So what happened? The incivility of America’s cities increased, Judge argues, in part because of the emerging drug trade, in part because of the radical politics of the 1960s, and in part because of the 30 percent federal excise tax levied against dance clubs in 1944. Well, yes, that list may seem a trifle out of balance. But here in the demise of the dance clubs is the heart of Judge’s demand for a return to “grown-up culture.”

Of course, Judge won’t deny that “the moral deregulation of public space” contributed. Another factor is symbolized by the 1944 launch of Seventeen magazine, which made “teenagers” an advertising market. The isolating effect of rock ‘n’ roll came in the 1950s. Especially traumatic was the selfishness emerging in the 1960s and 1970s: “In America’s obsession with fitness and personal appearance, our me-first race-obsessed politics and the therapeutic culture that has taken over our public life, we have become a narcissistic people.”

Judge uses his own transformation from liberal to conservative to describe America’s social discontent. He grew up in the Washington suburb of Potomac, Maryland, and he “arrived at young adulthood a radical leftist, steeped in the counterculture of the 1960s and the rock ‘n’ roll nihilism of the 1990s.” He believed America was a “country club filled with bigoted Neanderthals.”

The first crack in his liberal armor came when he chanced to read Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. But it was when he took a liking to jazz and read Duke Ellington’s memoir that he changed his mind about radical politics. Judge thought Ellington should have been “so twisted with rage at his country that he couldn’t get out of bed.” And yet, somehow, Ellington wasn’t. Judge soon realized “the genius behind ‘Mood Indigo’ . . . and hundreds of others was an elegant, articulate, stylish, patrician who had grown up the son of a butler and risen to play for presidents.”

Ellington’s debonair attitude illustrates one reason that big bands have seen a rebirth in recent years. Rock music in the 1980s and 1990s revered shock. Rebellion and rage were so common they ran out of targets, Judge notes. The revival of swing music has brought back into focus the pure joy of dancing. “Everything about swing — its dress, manners, unfiltered fun, and pure joy — contradicts the notion that humanity’s problems are the result of racism, homophobia, or lack of therapy.”

To address America’s problems, Lasch prescribed “localism, self-help, community action, and the homely comforts of love, work, and family life.” And these are the things, Judge claims, that swing music exalts. It reminds us of proper etiquette between the sexes, and good, clean fun — both things people born after 1965 are starving for.

Here is where the pieces of Judge’s argument come together. The rejection of radical politics requires the restoration of old-fashioned manners. The restoration of old-fashioned manners requires the rebirth of urban civility. The rebirth of urban civility requires the resurrection of the dance hall. The resurrection of the dance hall requires the return of swing music. And the return of swing music requires . . . well, the rejection of radical politics. In logic, this is what we call a “vicious circle.” But maybe Judge is right, and in real life it could prove a virtuous circle.

Vigorously arguing against the claim that the new swing movement has already died, and arguing even more vigorously against the claim that neoswing is a continuation of rock ‘n’ roll, Judge insists that his virtuous circle is not only true — but what young people like himself most deeply want. “People have always assumed that, like the baby-boomers, we have rejected the social and cultural mores of America’s past. The truth is we were never offered the choice.”

Jennifer Kabbany is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.