Western Swing

A subgenre of American country music that originated in the West and South among the region’s Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat that attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, folk, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing, and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos, and steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound. 1920s–1944.