Hokum
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Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music—a song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make humorous, sexual innuendos. This trope goes back to early dirty blues recordings, enjoyed a huge commercial success in 1920s and 1930s, and is used from time to time in modern American blues and blues rock. An example of hokum lyrics is this sample from "Meat Balls", by Lil Johnson, recorded about 1937: Terminology "Hokum", originally a vaudeville term used for a simple performance bordering on vulgarity, but hinting at a smart wordplay, was first used to describe the genre of black music in a billing of a race record for Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band (Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, 1929). After producing a big hit, "It's Tight Like That", with Vocalion Records (and its sequel) in 1928, the musicians went on to Paramount Records where they were called The Hokum Boys. Other recording studios joined the fray using similarly named ensembles. The application of ...
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Virginia Minstrels, 1843
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States, Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond, Virginia, Richmond; Virginia Beach, Virginia, Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County, Virginia, Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with Native American tribes in Virginia, several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established th ...
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Paramount Records
Paramount Records was an American record label known for its recordings of jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey, Tommy Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Early years Paramount Records was formed in 1918 by United Phonographs, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company, which trademarked its record brand from Port Washington and began issuing records the following year on the Puritan and Paramount labels. Puritan lasted only until 1927, but Paramount, based in the factory of its parent company in Grafton, Wisconsin, published some of the nation's most important early blues recordings between 1929 and 1932. The label's offices were located in Port Washington, Wisconsin and the pressing plant was located at 1819 S. Green Bay Road in Grafton. The label was managed by Fred Dennett Key. The Wisconsin Chair Company made wooden phonograph cabinets for Edison Records. In 1915 it started making its own phonographs in the name of its subsidiary ...
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Country Blues
Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in the early 20th century. History Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson (Texas), Charley Patton (Mississippi), Blind Willie McTell (Georgia) were among the first to record blues songs in the 1920s. Country blues ran parallel to urban blues, which was popular in cities. Folklorist Alan Lomax was one of the first to use the term and applied it to a field recording he made of Muddy Waters at the Stovall Plantation, Mississippi, in 1941. In 1959, music historian Samuel Charters wrote ''The Country Blues'', an influential scholarly work on the subject. He also produced an album, also titled ''The Country Blues'', with early recordings by Jefferson, McTell, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White, and Robert Johnson. Charters's works helped to i ...
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Classic Blues
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the other singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues. History Origin Blues, a type of black folk music originating in the American South, were mainly in the form of work songs until about 1900.Fabre and Feith 2001, p. 100. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886–1939), known as "The Mother of the Blues”, is credited as the first to perform the blues on stage as popular entertainment when she began incorporating blues into her act of show songs and comedy around 1902. Rainey had heard a woman singing about the man she had lost, learned the song, and began using it as her closing number, calli ...
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Medicine Shows
Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck, horse, or wagon teams) that peddled "miracle cure" patent medicines and other products between various entertainments. They developed from European mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth century, especially in the Old West (though some continued until World War II). They usually promoted "miracle elixirs" (sometimes referred to as snake oil), which, it was claimed, had the ability to cure disease, smooth wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common ailments. Most shows had their own patent medicine (these medicines were for the most part unpatented but took the name to sound official). Entertainments often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical acts, magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor who drew the crowd with a monologue. The entertainers, such as acrobats, musclemen, magicians, dancers, ventriloquists, exotic performer ...
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Minstrel Shows
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people wearing blackface make-up for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.The Coon Character
, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
John Kenrick

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Samba
Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Having its roots in Brazilian folk traditions, especially those linked to the primitive rural samba of the colonial and imperial periods, it is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country's symbols. Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "batuque-like circle dance", a dance style, and also to a "music genre". This process of establishing itself as a musical genre began in the 1910s and it had its inaugural landmark in the song " Pelo Telefone", launched in 1917. Despite being identified by its creators, the public, and the Brazilian music industry as "samba", ...
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Xote
Xote (, ) is a Brazilian music genre and dance with a binary or quaternary rhythm. It is the local equivalent of the German schottische. Xote is a common type of forró dancing. The word ''xote'' is a corruption of the German word ''schottisch'' meaning Scottish; the ''schottische'' is related to the Scottish polka. The schottische was brought to Brazil by José Maria Toussaint in 1851,"Xote". ''Nova enciclopédia Barsa'' (electronic version). and it was a dance popular among the upper classes during the reign of Emperor Pedro II. Later, black slaves danced their own adaptations of the dance, adding their own influences, converting it into a dance that was more popular and well known. This period was when the style came to be known as ''xote'' or ''xótis''. The xote is a very versatile dance and has a number of local versions, such as the southern version called ''xote gaúcho''. The dance may incorporate steps from other Latin American dances, such as salsa, rumba and mambo. ...
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Maxixe (dance)
The maxixe (), occasionally known as the Brazilian tango, is a dance, with its accompanying music (often played as a subgenre of choro), that originated in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in 1868, at about the same time as the tango was developing in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay. It is a dance developed from Afro-Brazilian dances (mainly the lundu) and from European dances (mainly the polka). Like the tango, the maxixe travelled to Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century. The music was influenced by various other forms including the Spanish tango, lundu, polka and habanera, and is danced to a rapid 2/4 time. Pianist Ernesto Nazareth composed many Brazilian tangos; he was known for blending folk influences into his tangos, polkas and waltzes. He resisted using folk terms for his compositions; he preferred ''Brazilian Tango'' to ''maxixe''.
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Lundu (dance)
Lundu (also spelled landu or landum) is a style of Afro-Brazilian music and dance with its origins in the African Bantu and Portuguese people. History The interconnectedness of Lusophone countries dates back to the Atlantic Slave Trade, between Portugal, Brazil and regions of Africa. In the 15th century, the Portuguese were the primary exporters of African slaves to the Americas, and with slaves came their musical traditions. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a massive Brazilian presence in Angola, enabling a cultural exchange between the two Portuguese colonies. This exchange enabled subtle amalgamations of musical styles between Angola, Brazil and other African slave trade countries. The establishment of a creole population in Brazil led to further cultural developments in language, religion and art. Dissemination Records from the inquisition of the 18th century reveal that the Europeans initially considered gandus and lundus to be witchcraft. Many slave-owni ...
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Ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles. " Maple Leaf Rag", " The Entertainer", "Fig Leaf Rag", "Frog Legs Rag", and "Sensation Rag" are among the most popular songs of the genre. The genre emerged from African American communities in the Southern and Midwestern United States, evolving from folk and minstrel styles and popular dances such as the cakewalk and combining with elements of classical and march music. Ragtime significantly influenced the development of jazz. In the 1960's, the genre had began to be revived with the publication '' The All Played Ragtime'' and artists re ...
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