Hoedown

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

A hoedown is a type of American folk dance or square dance in duple meter, and also the musical form associated with it.

In the 19th century the hoedown was mainly associated with black people, and was a dance in quick movement most likely related to the jig, reel or clog dance; however by the early 20th century the term was mainly associated with white Americans, particularly in rural or western parts of the country.

The most famous hoedown in classical music is the section entitled Hoedown from the Rodeo ballet by Aaron Copland (1942). The most frequently heard version is from the Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo, which Copland extracted from the ballet shortly after its premiere; the dance episodes were first performed in 1943 by the Boston Pops conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Copland's Hoedown became even more famous through television advertisements by America's Beef Producers with the slogan "Beef, It's What's for Dinner". Hoedown has been covered by Emerson, Lake and Palmer on their album Trilogy and by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones on their album Outbound.

The television show Whose Line Is It Anyway? frequently has a game called Hoedown, in which the contestants would perform a spontaneous song in this style. The four people take turns singing a verse each, whose rhyme scheme is AABB, and is widely considered a fan-favorite on the show. Many of the contestants on Whose Line, however, actively despise the game, but are usually good sports about performing in it.

Recent advertisements for the animated series Xiaolin Showdown have capitalized on the "hoedown/showdown" similarity pun.

Cf: Hootenanny