humppa

The tradition & historical record

Humppa is a type of music from Finland. It is related to jazz and fast foxtrot, played two beats to a bar (24 or 22) at around 110 to 130 beats per minute. Humppa is also the name of a few social dances done to humppa music. All dances involve a bounce that follows the strong bass. In Finnish, the word humppa can be used for social dancing. The name humppa was invented by Antero Alpola for a radio show in the 1950s. He picked it up from German Oktoberfest where the locals used the word oompah to describe the music. The band probably used a tuba, as the sound of tuba on the first beat is like hump, the second beat coming as a pa.

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

humppa is musical genre originating from Finland, 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 5 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹