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musical (comedy)
a popular form of musical theatre of the 20th century, developed chiefly in the US and England; it features spoken dialogue developing dramatic situations appropriate for song, ensemble numbers, and dance.
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portamento
a continuous movement from one pitch to another through all of the intervening pitches
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swing
jazz from the period 1935–45, usually known as the Swing Era; the standard instrumental combination for swing music is the big band
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swing feel
a jazz-specific feeling created by rhythmic contrast within a particular rhythmic framework (usually involving a walking bass and a steady rhythm on the drummer’s ride cymbal); the contrast may be manifested in a variety of relationships between long and short notes
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walking bass
a bass line featuring four equal beats per bar
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ride cymbal
a cymbal with a clear, focused timbre that is played more or less continuously
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32-bar popular song form
a standard song form, usually divided into shorter sections, such as AABA or AAB
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legato
played smoothly with no separation between successive notes
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backbeat
a sharp attack on beats 2 and 4 of a four beat bar
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lindy hop
an exuberant and often acrobatic social dance for couples that originated in the ballrooms and dance clubs of Harlem in New York City in the late 1920s; it was danced to swing music and by the mid-1930s it became wildly popular and began to include aerial throws and leaps
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rhythm and blues (R&B)
a term applied to certain characteristic African-American musical styles prominent during the late 1940s and the 1950s
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stop-time
in urban blues and related popular genres where, in the four opening bars of the 12-bar blues progression, the group places a heavy accent on the downbeat of each bar and then gives way to the singer
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rock and roll (Rock 'n' Roll)
a type of American popular music of the mid- to late-1950s, based chiefly on elements of Afro-American music; often described as a merger of black rhythm and blues with white country music, with more emphasis on the contributions of black musicians
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boogie-woogie
A percussive and propulsive jazz piano style characterized by forceful, repeated bass figuration, almost always using the 12-bar format of the blues
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dance from the 1960s on
largely bound up with specific youth subcultures and their identification with certain popular music groups or individual vocalists
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disco
a form of dance music that dominated popular music during the late-1970s; it featured regular bass drum accents on every beat and frequent use of orchestral instruments and synthesizers
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