Stride & Boogie Piano MIDI Files
Harlem Stride Piano, stride piano, commonly abbreviated to stride, is a jazz piano style that was developed in the large cities of the East Coast, mainly New York, during 1920s and 1930s. The left hand characteristically plays a four-beat pulse with a single bass note, octave, seventh or tenth interval on the first and third beats, and a chord on the second and fourth beats. Occasionally this pattern is reversed by placing the chord on the downbeat and bass note(s) on the upbeat. Unlike earlier “St. Louis”-style pianists, stride piano players’ left hands often leapt greater distances on the keyboard, and they played in a wider range of tempos and with a greater emphasis on improvisation.
This excerpt is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stride_piano
The origin of the term boogie-woogie is unknown, according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word is a reduplication of boogie, which was used for rent parties as early as 1913.
However, Dr. John Tennison, a San Antonio psychiatrist, pianist, and musicologist has suggested some interesting linguistic precursors.Among them are four African terms, including the Hausa word “Boog” and the Mandingo word “Booga”, both of which mean “to beat”, as in beating a drum. There is also the West African word “Bogi”, which means “to dance”, and the Bantu term “Mbuki Mvuki”, which means, “Mbuki—to take off in flight” and Mvuki—”to dance wildly, as if to shake off ones clothes”. The meanings of all these words are consistent with the percussiveness, dancing, and uninhibited behaviors historically associated with boogie-woogie music. Their African origin is also consistent with the evidence that the music originated among newly emancipated African Americans.
This excerpt is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie-woogie
