Animal Dance: A popular dance which emerged in the early 1900s which was adapted or borrowed from a black folk dance.
Blackface: Minstrel show practice in which white and (later) black performers applied burnt cork to darken their complexion.
Burlesques: In a minstrel show, humorous parodies of cultivated material.
Cakewalk: A dance fad of the 1890s; also the music to accompany the dance.
Call and response: rapid exchange, usually of rifts, between two different timbres: solo voice and guitar; solo voice and choir; or saxophones and trumpets.
Classic Blues: The popular blues style of the 1920s, which typically featured a woman singing the blues (e.g., Bessie Smith) accompanied by one or more jazz musicians.
Collective Improvisation: An improvisational context in which more than one performer is improvising a melody-like line. Collective improvisation is standard practice in New Orleans jazz, free jazz, and much rock-era jazz fusion.
Commercial Blues: Blues which is performed by professional musicians, is published, and recorded.
Concert Band: A band (woodwinds, brass, and percussion instruments) that performs in a concertlike setting (seated onstage, in front of an audience) rather than while marching.
Endmen: A comic in a minstrel troupe. Minstrel performers sat in a semicircle on-stage; an endman sat at one end or the other.
Foxtrot: A popular social dance of the 1920s and 30s that introduced a clearly black beat into mainstream culture.
Front Line: The horns (or other melody-line instruments, such as the vibraphone) in a jazz combo. The term comes from the position of the horn players on the bandstand: they stand in a line in front of the rhythm instruments.
Improvisation: The act of creating music spontaneously rather than performing a previously learned song the same way every time. Improvisation is one of the key elements in jazz. It gives musicians the opportunity to express inspirations and react to situations; requires virtuosity, melodic inventiveness, personality, and the ability to swing.
Interlocutor: The straight man in a minstrel show. The interlocutor would sit in the middle of the semicircle and ask questions of the endmen, who would give comic replies.
Interpolation: The insertion of a song into a musical comedy for which it was not written. Interpolation was common in the early years of musical comedy, when producers would insert a song into a show simply because it was a hit.
Jazz: A group of popular related styles primarily for listening. Jazz is usually distinguished from the other popular music of an era by greater rhythmic freedom (more syncopation and/or less-insistent beat keeping), extensive improvisation, and more-adventurous harmony. There are two families of jazz styles: those based on a four-beat rhythm and those based on a rock or 16-beat rhythm.
Marches: Music composed in regularly accented, usually duple (2/4) meter that is appropriate to accompany marching; a composition in the style of march music.
Minstrel Show: A form of stage entertainment distinguished by cruel parodies of African Americans. Minstrelsy was popular from the early 1840s to the end of the nineteenth century.
New Orleans Jazz: Style of jazz performance based on the early bands that performed in and around New Orleans; revived in the late 1940s, it is based on collective improvisation and quick tempos. The front-line instruments usually include cornet or trumpet, clarinet, and trombone, with a rhythm section usually including banjo, tuba, and sometimes piano. Also called Dixieland jazz.
Olio: The second section of a minstrel show-the variety portion that featured a wide range of unrelated acts, much like the later vaudeville shows.
Operetta: A light, often humorous, form of opera.
Parlor Song: A song to be sung at home in the parlor, like Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer,” popular through most of the nineteenth century. Also called home songs and piano bench music.
Patriotic Song: A song with a patriotic theme.
Piano Rag: A marchlike, syncopated composition for the piano.
Player Piano: A piano fitted with an apparatus enabling it to be played automatically by means of a rotating perforated roll. Video example here.
Race Records: A term that came into use in the early 1920s to describe recordings by African American artists intended for sale primarily in the African American community.
Ragtime: A popular style at the turn of the twentieth century that mixed European forms, harmony, and textures with African-inspired syncopation. Ragtime began as a piano music, but soon the term was applied to any music-song and dance as well as piano music-that had some syncopation.
Revue: A type of stage entertainment popular in the first third of the century. Revues were topical; they often lampooned prominent public figures. They had a flimsy plot, designed to link—however loosely—a series of songs, dance numbers, and comedy routines.
Songsters: A book containing the lyrics of popular songs.
Song Pluggers: A publishing-house pianist who could play a new song for a professional singer or a prospective customer.
Swing: Rhythmic play over a four-beat rhythm.
Tambo and Bones: Nicknames for the endmen in a minstrel show, so called because one usually played a tambourine and the other a pair of bones.
Tin Pan Alley: A nickname for a section of East 28th Street in New York City, where many music publishers had their offices. Also, the styles of the songs created in the first half of the century for these publishers: a Tin Pan Alley song refers to songs by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and their contemporaries.
Trio: One of the two main sections of a march, in a different key.
Unison: Two or more performers playing the same pitch.
Vaudeville: A form of stage entertainment popular from the 1880s to about 1930. It consisted of a series of acts: singers, dancers, novelty performers, and comics. It differed from the revue and musical comedy in that there was no attempt to link vaudeville acts into a dramatically coherent whole.
Walkaround: A type of song popular around 1900 in which a flowing melody is supported by a simple, waltz-time accompaniment.
Waltz Song: A type of song popular around 1900 in which a flowing melody is supported by a simple, waltz-time (3/4) accompaniment.