This article mainly concentrates on the different types of music a Lindy Hop dancer can dance to, but it can apply to many other types of swing dance as well, such as East Coast Swing, hence its appearance here.

Lindy Hop can be done to any music with a swing rhythm: music played in 4/4 time with a rhythm that has an even-keeled "pulse" on every beat along with syncopated triplets that shift the beat slightly (bat... ba-bat, bat... ba-bat, instead of bat-bat-bat, bat-bat-bat) for rhythmic emphasis. This American-originated rhythm is present in all forms of American music: not just Jazz and Blues, but also all types of Rock, Country, and "R&B" music. Lindy Hop dance patterns can be done to any music that is in 4/4 time (thus making sense of the 8-count patterns), even without the syncopation, such as lots of other kinds of Funk, Rap, Hip Hop, Rock, Blues, Soul, and even Country music.

The types of music typically played at Lindy Hop dances primarily fall within the following genres of music:

Big Band Swing Music
Count Basie (pictured with orchestra), Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, Artie Shaw, Harry James, among others. This music is typified by an explosive, upbeat, rhythmic sound that can float gracefully or groove funky depending on the song. Some of the richest, most vibrant and complex music around can superficially uplift you or even profoundly move you, depending on your level of appreciation or interest.

Big Band Swing can be divided into sub-genres of its own: Classic, Swing-Era Big Band, and modern, "New Testament" Big Band. The difference does not just refer to the differences between monaural vs. stereo recording techniques, but also to performance differences that better technology facilitated, as well as influences from other evolutionary forces in music such as Bebop and Progressive Jazz.

Jump Blues
Louis Jordan (pictured with the Tympany 5), Jimmy and Joe Liggins, The Cadets, Etta James, Willie Brown, Louis Prima, Ella Mae Morse, Roy Milton, among others. This music is the precursor to Rock and Roll: Bluesy, but with a light, simple swing rhythm that gives it an upbeat feeling and energy. Defined loosely, it can also include Motown soul music from the late 1960s, as well. Great for party dancing or Lindy Hop.

Vintage Pop Vocalists
Frank Sinatra (pictured), Nat "King" Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, among others. This genre includes "swank," mostly jazz-oriented music from the 1940s-1960s, where the vocalist fronted the band and took center stage. It ranges from fun, rhythmic Swing tunes to crooning ballads to smooth, velvety, martini-lounge tunes.

Mainstream Swing Jazz
Oscar Peterson, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young (pictured with Billie Holiday & Ben Webster), Ben Webster (pictured), among others. This sound is typified by a softer, more sophisticated feeling, yet is still rhythmic and danceable. Ideal for "cocktail party" feeling or background dinner music, yet not as bland, dull, or sleepy as modern "Smooth Jazz" can get. Great for slow dancing or slow Lindy Hopping.

Groove Swing
"Groove Swing" is a dancers term, not a musicians term, so you will not find it in any music store. It is not yet a musical genre of its own right). The term refers to the way a song is performed more than how it is composed or arranged: swing music that is played with a heavy bass-laden emphasis, where the bass is more amplified and played with a soft attack and long sustain so as to give the bass more of an omnipresent sound instead of a staccato thumping sound. The bass rhythm is so rich and strong that it sits down into a deep "groove" from which the beat emanates: thus the term.

The origins of "Groove swing" seem to begin with Count Basie's New Testament Band in the 1950s, when amplification allowed the Bass player (Ed Jones) to reduce his attack (how hard he plucks the bass string) and sustain each note longer to provide a mellower, "groovier" rhythm that rolls a bit more fluidly than the "chonk-chonk" beat typical of other swing music. The "groove" dug even deeper when other "Soul Jazz" musicians of the 1960s, 70, 80s, and even 90s took the small-band formula of Mainstream Jazz and injected some "uumph!" into the rhythm, developing that Groove into a sub-genre of its own so popular among dancers that it has its own venue named in its honor: Lindy Groove (http://lindygroove.com), in L.A.

Gene Harris, Jack MacDuff, Charles Brown, Al Grey, Ray Brown, and even modern musicians like Barbara Morrison produce this sound at it best.

Blues
Everybody knows Da Blues: Muddy Waters, BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Pinetop Perkins, and Snooky Pryor (pictured), among many, many others. Many different rhythms have developed within the Blues, and not all of them are danceable. But the straight-forward, 12-Bar Blues from which it all began typifies Lindy Music at its best. The more relaxed the Bass rhythm, the better.

Neo Swing
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Royal Crown Revue (pictured), Brian Setzer, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Ray Gelato, among others. This music borrows elements from Jump Blues, Rock, and Big Band Swing to create a frenetic, up-tempo dance music associated with the Neo-Swing fad of the late 1990s.

"Westie Lindy" Music
"Westie Lindy" music refers rather broadly and generally to any 4/4 music that does NOT have a Swing rhythm. Although it is not Swing music in any sense of the word, you can still dance Lindy Hop patterns to it because these patterns still fit within the 4/4 time. Instead of syncopating rhythm (shifting the rhythm slightly for emphasis) in triplets with a "bat... ba-bat, bat... ba-bat" beat, the triplet beat is hit more evenly with a "bat-bat-bat, bat-bat-bat." This non-syncopated rhythm in 4/4 time can be found in Soul, Rap, Hip-Hop, Country, Rock, and Blues music, and, as such, is somewhat of a broad "other" category. This "other" category makes some purists cringe, but has gained more and more acceptance over time.

Hip Hop, Rap, Funk
Not always associated with Swing music and Swing dancing, Funk, Hip Hop, and Rap music are the modern "street-music" descendants of Swing, causing just as much of a ruckus among stodgy attitudes as Swing music once did in the 1930s and 40s. From the 70s Funk of The Commodores, Earth Wind and Fire, and Rick James to the modern music of Coolio, Tupac, and even Will Smith, this music always seems to get a party going.

*** The final word ***

There are enthusiasts who insist that Lindy Hop be done to only the vintage, classic swing music that inspired its creation. The original, classic Swing music is great and every Lindy Hopper should maintain an appreciation for it. However, just as Jazz and Blues music has evolved quite a bit since 1933, so has Lindy Hop. Most of that evolution has occurred in a few short years since Lindy Hop re-emerged from obscurity in the mid 1990s, whereas the music has seen 60 years of evolution since the end of the Swing Era, so the evolution of Lindy Hop still has a way to go to catch up.

Since Lindy Hop and Swing dancing re-emerged from virtual extinction in the mid-1990s, they have grown and evolved far beyond the classic Swing Era music that inspired their creation and beyond the pop-ish, Neo Swing that helped bring them back to life in the mid-nineties. Although the Neo Swing stuff has its merits, Lindy Hoppers have mostly abandoned Neo Swing and other Swingster, Hepster, Lounge Acts. Lindy Hoppers now dance to widely diverse jazz and blues music, from the classic Swing Era music of Benny Goodman, Count Basie or Duke Ellington to the more modern, grooving jazz of Oscar Peterson, Al Grey, Ray Bryant, Roy Eldridge, Jack MacDuff, and other jazz greats, as well as the hard-hitting Blues of Buddy Guy, Willie Dixon, and even Austin's own Stevie Ray Vaughn. We no longer respond much to the prototypical, monorhythmic "Swing Dance" music, but instead dance to jazz and blues that pure music enthusiasts would love, as well. Lindy Hopping to the music is just another way of appreciating this great American music. Indeed, it is the best way.

"Swing Music" is a broad term that many people use differently, and is often confused with the term "Swing Rhythm." Essentially, the term "Swing Music" applies to a narrower genre of music (a type of Jazz and, arguably, Blues), whereas "Swing Rhythm" refers to a type of rhythm that can be used in many different types of music: jazz, blues, rock, country, and even hip-hop and rap. "Swing Music" is also a term developed by musicians and historians, and thus serves purposes that extend beyond identifying the music to which we like to dance. Thus, we prefer to speak in terms of "Lindy Hop Music" or "Music for Swing Dancing."