Contra dance is a form of folk dancing made up of long lines of couples. It has mixed origins from English country dance, Scottish country dance, and French dance styles in the 17th century. Sometimes described as New England folk dance or Appalachian folk dance, contra dances can be found around the world, but are most common in the United States, Canada, and other Anglophone countries.
A folk dance is a dance that reflects the life of the people of a certain country or region. Not all ethnic dances are folk dances. For example, ritual dances or dances of ritual origin are not considered to be folk dances. Ritual dances are usually called "Religious dances" because of their purpose. The terms "ethnic" and "traditional" are used when it is required to emphasize the cultural roots of the dance. In this sense, nearly all folk dances are ethnic ones. If some dances, such as polka, cross ethnic boundaries and even cross the boundary between "folk" and "ballroom dance", ethnic differences are often considerable enough to mention.
Music radio is a radio format in which music is the main broadcast content. After television replaced old time radio's dramatic content, music formats became dominant in many countries. Radio drama and comedy continue, often on public radio.
A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a group of people, usually in couples, in one or more sets. The figures involve interaction with your partner and/or with other dancers, usually with a progression so that you dance with everyone in your set. It is common in modern times to have a "caller" who teaches the dance and then calls the figures as you dance. Country dances are done in many different styles.
A square dance is a dance for four couples, or eight dancers in total, arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, facing the middle of the square. Square dances contain elements from numerous traditional dances and were first documented in 16th-century England, but they were also quite common in France and throughout Europe. Early square dances, particularly English country dances and French quadrilles, traveled to North America with the European settlers and developed significantly there.
Modern western square dance is one of two American types of square dancing, along with traditional square dance. As a dance form, modern western square dance grew out of traditional square dance in the American West. The term western square dance, for some, is synonymous with "cowboy dance" or traditional western square dance. Therefore, this article uses the term "modern western square dance" to describe the contemporary non-historical dance which grew out of the traditional dance. Modern western square dance was the official dance of the United States from 1982 to 1993.
The music of the United States reflects the country's multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. It is a mixture of music influenced by the music of Europe, Indigenous peoples, West Africa, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, amongst many other places. The country's most internationally renowned genres are traditional pop, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rock and roll, R&B, pop, hip-hop/rap, soul, funk, religious, disco, house, techno, ragtime, doo-wop, folk, americana, boogaloo, tejano, reggaeton, surf, and salsa. American music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
A cèilidh or céilí is a traditional Scottish or Irish social gathering. In its most basic form, it simply means a social visit. In contemporary usage, it usually involves dancing and playing Gaelic folk music, either at a house party or a larger concert at a social hall or other community gathering place.
Irish set dancing, sometimes called "Irish sets", is a popular form of folk dancing in Ireland danced to Irish tunes in groups of eight or four dancers. It is also sometime named set dance, but this name refers more often to a kind of dance in Irish stepdance.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
A caller is a person who prompts dance figures in such dances as line dance, square dance, and contra dance. The caller might be one of the participating dancers, though in modern country dance this is rare.
National Barn Dance, broadcast by WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois starting in 1924, was one of the first American country music radio programs and a direct precursor of the Grand Ole Opry.
A radio format or programming format describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelled to develop new and exclusive ways to programming by competition with television. The formula has since spread as a reference for commercial radio programming worldwide.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, the African music and blues of early African Americans, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Traditional square dance is a generic American term for any style of American square dance other than modern Western. The term can mean (1) any of the American regional styles that existed before around 1950, when modern Western style began to develop out of a blend of those regional styles, or (2) any style that has survived, or been revived, since around 1950.
Ted Sannella was a professional square dance, contra dance and international folk dance caller and choreographer who was active in the region surrounding Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. He was a seminal figure in the contra dance folk revival in the United States in the mid to late 20th century.
Jesse Donald "Uncle Jimmy" Thompson was an American old-time fiddle player and singer-songwriter. He is best remembered as the first performer to play on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, appearing with founder and host George D. Hay on the evening of November 28, 1925. The positive response generated by Thompson's performance would be an important influence on the show's creative direction in its formative years. While Thompson made only a handful of recordings late in his life, his cantankerous and eccentric personality and his fiddle skills have made him one of the best-known icons of early country music.
Céilí dances or true éilí dances are a popular form of folk dancing in Ireland. Céilí dances are based on heys, round dances, long dances, and quadrilles, generally revived during the Gaelic revival in the first quarter of the twentieth century and codified by the Irish Dancing Commission. These thirty dances form the basis for examination of céilí dance teachers. Irish céilí is a participatory social event attended by both men and women and accompanied by live Irish traditional music.
