Carnegie Hall

Musicians communicate with each other through the language of music. One form of musical communication is known as call and response, in which musicians play, listen, and respond to each other in a musical dialogue, all while maintaining the steady beat, form, and rhythm of the piece. This back and forth can range from a simple echo to a more intricate conversation between musicians or entire sections of an ensemble. Call and response is a musical tool that adds excitement, spontaneity, and swing to the music.

• Practice spoken examples of call and response with the students, including both echoes and questions and answers (e.g. “Knock, knock?” “Who’s there?”).
• Practice call and response rhythms. You can start with patterns the students already know, and then move on to improvised rhythms.
• Try out these same examples of call and response at different tempos and different dynamic levels.
• Invite students to take turns leading the call and response. For an added challenge, have a group of students maintain a steady beat, or utilize the rhythm section while other students experiment with call and response.
• Discuss musical communication with the students.
  • Why do you think it is important for musicians to work together and have good communication?
  • What are some examples of things that you do together as a group that require good communication?

• Listen for call and response in “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (Armstrong complete). The call and response begins at 0:56 in the recording, after an introduction performed by the trumpet player and singer.
  • What did you notice in these examples of call and response?
  • What instruments do you hear?
  • What are the musicians doing in their musical conversations that is similar to the way we have spoken conversations?

• While keeping the beat with a stomp-clap (stomping on beats 1 and 3 and clapping on beats 2 and 4), have half the class sing the call while the other half provides the response. Have students switch parts.
  Call: It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing
  Response: Doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah
  Call: It don’t mean a thing, all you got to do is sing
  Response: Doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah
• The response for “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” is a version of scat singing. Scat singing, or “scatting,” is a jazz technique in which vocalists use syllables to improvise on a melody. Sometimes musicians use scat singing to mimic the sound of instruments.
• Play “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (Armstrong scat excerpt).
  • What do you notice about the way Louis Armstrong is singing?
  • What sounds or instruments do you think he is trying to imitate?

• Demonstrate some examples of scat responses, then ask the students to take turns creating their own scat solo response. This can be done a cappella or with “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (play-along).
  Call: It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing (students)
  Response: Improvise a four-measure response (solo)

• Divide students into pairs. One student will sing an improvised scat solo “call” for four measures. The other student will respond with an improvised scat response for four measures. Explain that this dialogue—in which each musician plays four measures—is called trading fours.
  • Pick some instruments to mimic for your scat patterns.
  • What sounds might your instrument make? How can you mimic those sounds using your voice?
• Students may use the activity My Scat Patterns (PDF) to record their ideas.
• Put it all together by playing “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (play-along) while the students perform their scat patterns.

Go Deeper

Discuss other pieces of Link Up repertoire in which call and response and scatting can be heard.

Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony

• When Wynton Marsalis composed Swing Symphony, he took inspiration from composers like Ives, Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, and Ellington as he sought to create a musical meditation on American ideals. The third movement, “Midwestern Moods,” is a Kansas City, Count Basie–style swing, featuring riffs (snappy, repeated phrases) in the brass section, call and response between the jazz ensemble and the orchestra, and a swinging rhythm section. This musical dialogue transitions to a large ensemble section with every musician playing and swinging together.
• Listen to “Midwestern Moods” from Swing Symphony. Divide students into four groups: woodwind, brass, string, and percussion families. Have students raise their hands, stand up, or hold up instrument family flashcards when they hear an instrument from their section playing.
  • How does each instrument or instrument family add a unique sound to the piece?
  • What do you think the musicians are trying to communicate through the call and response sections?
  • How does the music swing when all the musicians play together?

• Florence Price was a trailblazing Black female composer who wrote music at a time when few opportunities were available for women or African American artists. In 1933, Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor became the first piece by an African American woman to be performed by a major American orchestra.
• Listen to “Juba” from Symphony No. 1. Notice the melodic motif that is first introduced by the trumpets and then repeated and passed around the orchestra throughout the piece.
  • What instruments do you hear playing this melody?
  • How does each instrument or instrument family add to or change the melody to make it their own?
  • How do the musicians create a musical conversation?
  • What might they be communicating?
  • How would you move to this music?

• Practice passing a melody as a class. Have students stand in a circle around the room. Ask one student to sing a short phrase from a familiar song or speak a phrase. The first student will sing the melody and then pass or point to another student around the circle to repeat that melody. Each student can improvise and add their own style. You may even invite students to create movements with their melody as it is passed around the class.

Go Deeper

In Price’s “Juba,” the orchestra performs rhythms associated with the juba dance tradition. Her work shows the ways in which many Black musical idioms, such as jazz and swing, have roots in modes of artistic expression that were developed out of necessity among enslaved Africans. Explore Plantation Dance / Ring Shout through a lesson plan developed by PBS LearningMedia to learn more about the history of the juba dance.

In the Swing Era of the 1930s and ’40s, the music became synonymous with movement as big bands dominated social dance halls across the US. During the Great Depression, the music and movement lifted people’s spirits, providing them with an escape from the hardships of everyday life. Through recordings and live radio programs, swing hits of the era were also broadcast into living rooms everywhere, and the popularity of swing increased as people invented new dances to complement its driving rhythms.

Swing Dance

Swing dance is a style of dance that is associated with the Swing Era (approximately 1935–1945) and the swing style and rhythm in jazz. Hundreds of swing dances were invented during the Swing Era, including the famous Lindy hop, which was wildly popular at the historic Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, New York.

Like musicians, swing dancers use call and response to communicate through movement. Dancers watch their partners closely to pick up on and respond to each other’s movements while listening carefully and staying connected to the music.

• Watch the video “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” Choreography Demonstration.
• Learn the movements through the instructions given in the activity “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” Choreography (PDF).