Hokey Pokey

The Hokey Cokey (also known as Hokey Pokey in the United States) is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well-known in English-speaking countries. It originates in a British folk dance, with variants attested as early as 1826. The song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hall song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in the UK. The song became a chart hit twice in the 1980s. The first UK hit was by The Snowmen, which peaked at UK No. 18 in 1981.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Hokey Cokey”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Hokey Pokey is participation song and dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶