BUFFALO — I offer a brief tutorial on big bands and the swing era, a la the Alex Rene Big Band, but you likely do not need it. You likely did not live though the era of its ascendance, roughly 1935 to ’46, but you know it when you hear it.

It is, for starters, ensemble music. Somewhere between 12 and 25 people are in a typical big band, a shock when you think of the jazz trios that followed it, historically, or the standard rock group layout of guitar-bass-drums-vocalist (in fact, the costs associated with dragging so large an orchestra around America, by bus or train, helped lead to the genre’s demise). There are brass instruments galore, rhythm instruments galore and typically a singer. And oh, can they swing.

Melody is important, as are lyrics. Tempo is crucial, as is setting a mood (be it romance or joy or heartache; this is what’s regarded as atmospheric music). Big band music offers the complete package; hear a rock group and you’ve heard, hopefully, a tight little set — hear a big band swinging the night away and you’ve seen a show.

It remains a beloved style of American pop music. High school orchestras today play reduced arrangements of tunes that were popular before the students’ grandmothers were around; that a musician can get a thorough grounding in playing his or her instrument by practicing this material is a testament to how strong these songs and arrangements were, and how talented those players were back then.

A number of big bands exist in Western New York, always drawing an appreciative audience. Alex Rene’s Big Band strives for authenticity, to the point they use the original “charts,” or arrangements, from the 30s and 40s. The Ladies First Big Band, led by bassist Jennifer May, skews toward jazz when not reworking the standards (and is a 17-piece all-female orchestra, although most definitely not a novelty act). George Scott’s Big Band sets up regularly at the Colored Musicians Club in Buffalo and goes on the road with a revolving committee of dedicated musicians. There are others in town as well. This music will not go away, regardless of what styles or technologies supersede it.

It is fun to listen to, and easy to dance to. The lyrics tend to resonate in personal experience. There is wit in the writing and in the playing. It may stun people to learn there once was a time that American popular music — the stuff you heard on the radio — was sophisticated and complex with elaborate arrangements, words that were meaningful and articulate yet catchy and danceable. As I said, the complete package.

Ah, radio. Big band music’s popularity ascended with the rise of radio as the dominant form of mass media in America, especially after radio stations grouped themselves into networks. Wherever one lived in the Depression-era country, he or she could hear how it was done in New York, Chicago, Kansas City. The whites and blacks could hear each other’s work (music was never segregated, but the music business was), and there was always a dance to attend in one’s hometown; big bands made their money by constant touring.

And by recording. This was the era of 78 RPM records, those thick and shiny discs that offered about 4 minutes of material on each side. A band could really strut its stuff in 4 minutes. The Benny Goodman Orchestra’s 1937 record of “Sing Sing Sing,” the one with the extended drum solo by Gene Krupa that is emblematic of big band music the way “Stairway to Heaven” is the Holy Grail of heavy metal, was nearly nine minutes long, and took up both sides of a 78 RPM record, a breakthrough at the time. By a stack of recordings (a “record album” had about 8 records in it, and sat on the shelf like a heavy book) and you could swing the night away.

In the 21st century, big band music remains surprisingly popular in a niche populated by fans who weren’t there in the 1940s, yet find something to love about it. Young musicians find it useful as training, nostalgia enthusiasts find comfort in what they think was a simpler time (even though big band music was the de-facto soundtrack of the Depression and World War II) and a night at an event such as an appearance by Alex Rene’s orchestra, with all band members dressed to the nines and sitting behind those massive and shined-up music stands, is something to be remembered.

And did I mention that you can dance to it?

Contact Ed Adamczyk at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.