RESEARCH

Rebinding the Western Swing Songbook: Following the songs, musicians, and musical traditions that helped shape Western swing.

Western swing grew from music already moving through American life. Blues, jazz, fiddle music, Hawaiian steel guitar, Mexican American music, popular songs, vaudeville, polkas, waltzes, and other traditions could be heard on records, radio broadcasts, dance floors, stages, and front porches across the Southwest and beyond.

It also developed during an era of legal segregation and sharp social limits on where musicians could work, travel, perform, stay, record, and be heard. Record companies often separated Black and white performers into different commercial categories, while Mexican American musicians and other regional performers were marketed through their own channels. Those divisions shaped the historical record, even as songs and musical ideas continued to move between communities.

Western swing musicians drew from this wide musical world. They learned songs, changed arrangements, borrowed ideas, and carried music from many sources into a new tradition.

Rebinding the Western Swing Songbook follows those connections through recordings, musicians, songs, and the musical traditions that surrounded them.

The first research entries will be published in January 2027.