Upswing

IT seems that every development of national consequence these days involves The Gap. There was, of course, Monica’s navy blue dress, about which the less said the better. And then there was the Jump, Jive, and Wail television ad—a commercial for The Gap in which a gaggle of twenty-somethings in khakis and T-shirts jitterbug themselves silly. Monica’s Gap dress certified that Bill Clinton is a satyric liar; the Gap ad certified that swing dancing is an honest-to-goodness craze.

The “khakis swing” ad was just one of a slew of commercials for The Gap featuring various musical genres. There was the spot with khaki-clad hip-hop kids break-dancing; there were the suburban youth inline-skating to a Seventies groove. But compared with the swing ad, the rock and funk spots were tired and pointless. All it takes is a few bars of Louis Prima jumping, jiving, and wailing to demonstrate that, at the end of the century, the dominant musical paradigm is exhausted.