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cadence rampa

Cadence Rampa

Dancing Happy Romantic Sentimental

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Description

Cadence rampa (also spelled kadans rampa) is a Haitian dance‑music style created in the early 1960s by saxophonist and bandleader Weber Sicot as a rival variation to Nemours Jean‑Baptiste’s compas direct. It keeps the steady méringue‑derived four‑on‑the‑floor pulse of compas but adds brisker tempos, tight brass fanfares, and dramatic “rampa” (ramp‑up) breaks that propel dancers into refrains.

Built for nightclubs and large ballrooms, the style features clear melodic saxophone/trumpet leads, interlocking guitar and piano patterns, and a prominent cowbell/conga drive. Through touring bands, cadence rampa spread across the Antilles and helped seed later Caribbean fusions.

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Compas (also spelled konpa or compas direct) is Haiti’s modern, méringue-based dance music. It features a steady, driving groove, lyrical melodies, and tight horn or synth hooks designed for continuous social dancing. The style blends Haitian méringue rhythms with jazz and Afro‑Cuban/Latin elements, typically in a mid‑tempo 4/4. A locked‑in drum/cowbell pattern, syncopated bass ostinatos, percussive rhythm guitar, keyboards playing montuno-like figures, and call‑and‑response vocals in Haitian Creole or French are core traits. Since the late 1970s, electronic keyboards and drum machines have been common, but the feel remains warm, romantic, and unshakably danceable.

Méringue is a 19th‑century Haitian couple dance and song form that became a national emblem of urban salon culture and public festivity. It blends European ballroom idioms with Afro‑Haitian rhythmic sensibilities, resulting in a graceful yet rhythmically buoyant style. Typically notated in 2/4 (sometimes felt in a gentle 4/4), méringue features habanera- and cinquillo-like syncopations, lilting melodies, and a clear, songful lyricism. In salons it was often performed on solo piano or small chamber combinations; in public spaces and later dance bands it expanded to include guitars, banjo/banza, wind instruments, and Haitian drums. Over time, méringue existed both as an elegant salon repertoire (méringue de salon) and as a lively popular dance music. Its rhythmic DNA and formal habits would later underpin modern Haitian dance genres such as compas direct and, by extension, influence the broader Caribbean dance continuum.

Mambo is a Cuban dance music style that crystallized in the late 1930s from danzón and son montuno, then exploded internationally in the 1940s and 1950s. It is characterized by layered syncopations under the Afro‑Cuban clave, driving bass tumbaos, piano montunos, and powerful antiphonal horn riffs known as moñas or "mambo" sections. In its classic big‑band form, mambo blends Cuban rhythmic vocabulary with jazz and swing arranging, featuring trumpets, trombones, and saxophones over a rhythm section of congas, bongos, timbales, cowbell, bass, and piano. The result is high‑energy, riff‑driven music built for social dancing and floor‑filling excitement.

Son cubano is a foundational Cuban genre that fuses Spanish-derived song forms and harmony with Afro-Cuban rhythms and percussion. Born in eastern Cuba (Oriente) and crystallized in Havana in the 1910s–1920s, it became the backbone of much of 20th‑century Latin popular music. Typical ensembles began as sextetos (tres, guitar, bongó, maracas, claves, and bass or marímbula) and later evolved into septetos with trumpet. Conjunto formats in the 1940s added piano, congas, and multiple horns. The music rides a son clave (in 3‑2 or 2‑3 orientation), features interlocking tres guajeos, a walking/tumbao bass that anticipates the downbeat, and call‑and‑response vocals in the montuno section. Harmonically it is rooted in I–IV–V with bluesy dominant sevenths and occasional secondary dominants. Lyrically it balances romance, everyday life, and streetwise wit, always aimed at dancing and social gathering.

Bolero is a romantic Cuban song genre that emerged in the late 19th century in Santiago de Cuba within the trovador tradition. It is characterized by a slow to moderate tempo, lyrical melodies, and intimate, sentimental lyrics centered on love, longing, and heartbreak. Unlike the Spanish dance of the same name, the Cuban bolero is a vocal, guitar-led form that later expanded to trios and orchestras. Its rhythmic backbone often draws on the habanera/tresillo feel, while harmony ranges from simple tonic–dominant motion to lush progressions with secondary dominants and jazz-inflected extensions in later styles. Bolero became a pan–Latin American idiom during the 20th century, shaping the repertoire of trios románticos and crossover stylings in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and beyond, and laying crucial foundations for later romantic currents in Latin pop and ballad traditions.

Jazz is an improvisation-centered music tradition that emerged from African American communities in the early 20th century. It blends blues feeling, ragtime syncopation, European harmonic practice, and brass band instrumentation into a flexible, conversational art. Defining features include swing rhythm (a triplet-based pulse), call-and-response phrasing, blue notes, and extended harmonies built on 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Jazz is as much a way of making music—spontaneous interaction, variation, and personal sound—as it is a set of forms and tunes. Across its history, jazz has continually hybridized, from New Orleans ensembles and big-band swing to bebop, cool and hard bop, modal and free jazz, fusion, and contemporary cross-genre experiments. Its influence permeates global popular and art music.

Biguine is a lively Afro-Creole dance music that originated in Martinique and Guadeloupe and later took Paris by storm in the interwar years. Its groove fuses African-derived drumming and stick patterns with European ballroom dances, producing a buoyant, syncopated feel in duple meter. Traditionally led by clarinet, trombone or trumpet with banjo/guitar, bass, and hand percussion (ti bwa sticks, chacha/maracas, and drums), biguine alternates catchy, ornamented melodies with call-and-response riffs. Harmonically it favors bright, diatonic progressions with dance-friendly phrasing, making it equally at home in street parades, salon dances, and concert settings.

Caribbean Folk Music

Caribbean folk music is the community-rooted, largely oral-tradition body of songs, dances, rhythms, and performance practices that formed through centuries of Afro‑Indigenous‑European encounter across the islands. It developed in work camps, plantations, fishing villages, ceremonial yards, and village fêtes, where call‑and‑response singing, polyrhythmic drumming, and dance served as both social glue and cultural memory. The style is marked by hand drums and percussion (ka, barriles de bomba, panderos de plena, tambú, maracas/shak‑shak, ti bwa, bones, and later steelpan), strummed chordophones (guitar, cuatro, tres, banjo), and fife/violin or accordion in some locales. Rhythms often draw on clave, habanera/cinquillo cells, and 6/8–2/4 cross‑rhythms, while harmonies typically favor simple I–IV–V cycles that foreground storytelling in Creole, English, Spanish, and French. Songs accompany dance, carnival processions, rites, and everyday labor, yielding a music that is at once festive, satirical, devotional, and historical.

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