- Humppa
Humppa is a type of
music fromFinland . It is related tojazz and very fast foxtrot, played two beats to a bar. Typical speed is about 250 to 280 beats per minuteFact|date=April 2008. Humppa is also the name of a fewsocial dance s danced to humppa music. All dances involve bounce that follows the strong bass of the music. InFinnish language , the word humppa can also be used for all social dancing. The name humppa was invented byAntero Alpola for a radio show in the 1950s. He picked it up from GermanOktoberfest where the locals used the word to describe the playing of the band. The band probably used atuba , as the sound of tuba on the first beat is like "hump", the second beat coming as a "pa". (The related German style is known asoompah .)One form of Humppa dance is related to
One-step , which arrived in Finland 1913. In this kind of humppa, both dancers take a step on each first beat (on "hump") and progress to the direction of dance. This is danced making turns inclosed position or making figures by changing variousopen position s. The second Humppa form is related to Two-step, which came to Finland in 1910. This Humppa has somerhythm and movement from Samba andWaltz . A third form of dance, "Nilkku", is based on a slow, slow, quick, quick rhythm. The first quick step hardly takes any weight and gives the dance an appearance of limping.Social dancing in Finland had a decline due to new dances that were danced alone, such as the Twist, becoming popular in the 1960s. Social dancing however never died and Humppa has maintained an important role in dance events until today. Fact|date=June 2008
Due to the joyfulness of the music style, even those who don't know how to dance know the music style at least from various humorous artists, such as the
Eläkeläiset .Fact|date=June 2008Humppa is also popular among some
hacker culture aficionados. Fact|date=June 2008The band
Eläkeläiset is mostly known for its humppa versions of popular mainstream music.Fact|date=June 2008The Finnish metal band
Finntroll combinesfolk metal and humppa elements. They describe their music as "troll ish humppa metal" (with Swedish lyrics).References
* The Finnish dance server http://tanssi.net/fi/tausta/humppa.html
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