what is the defination of tap music?

Answer 1

Tap music would be defined as music that one can do tap dancing to easily. Here are a list of songs previously posted as good tap songs:

What I like About You
On Broadway
Footloose
All That Jazz
I Enjoy Being A Girl
Shout!
Hot, Hot, Hot
Greased Lightning
You're the One that I Want
I'm Just a Girl
It's Raining Men
Shake, Shake Baby
Shake, Rattle, and Roll
I'm So Excited
Great Balls of Fire
Get up Off yo Thang
Ain't Got That Swing
Tappin' Beat
Groove is in the Heart
Walkin' On Sunshine
Walk Like an Egyptian
Love Shack
Born to Entertain

Answer 2

Tap dance was born in the United States during the nineteenth century, and today is popular all around the world. The name comes from the tapping sound made when the small metal plates on the dancer's shoes touch a hard floor. This lively, rhythmic tapping makes the performer not just a dancer, but also a percussive musician.

Its evolutionary grandparents may have been:

African dance to drum rhythms
African welly boot dance
Irish Sean-nós step dancing
Spanish flamenco, where nails are hammered into the heel and the front part of the dancers' shoes, so that the rhythm of their steps can be heard
Step dancing
Clogging, for example from Lancashire, where there may be no accompanying music, just the noise of the shoes
Tap may have begun in the 1830s in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City as a fusion of Irish and African Shuffle. Perhaps the most influential of all was the Irish jig. Dancers from different immigrant groups would get together to compete and show off their best moves. As the dances fused, a new American style of dancing emerged.

Tap flourished in the U.S. from 1900 to 1955, when it was the main performance dance of Vaudeville and Broadway. Vaudeville was the inexpensive entertainment before television, and it employed droves of skilled tap dancers. Many big bands included tap dances as part of their show. For a while, every city in the U.S. had amateur street tap performers. At the time, tap dance was also called jazz dance, because jazz was the music that tap dancers performed with.

In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the best tap dancers moved from Vaudeville to the movies and television. Steve Condos, with his innovative style of percussion tap, created a whole new tap style that he introduced to audiences in Vaudeville, and later to the audiences of film and Broadway.

During the 1930s tap dance mixed with Lindy Hop. "Flying swing outs" and "flying circles" are Lindy Hop moves with tap footwork.

In the 1950s, the style of entertainment changed. Jazz music and tap dance declined, while rock and roll music and the new jazz dance emerged. What is now called jazz dance evolved out of tap dance, so both dances have many moves in common. But, jazz evolved separately from tap to become a new form in its own right.

No Maps on My Taps, the Emmy award winning PBS documentary of 1979, helped begin the recent revival of tap dance. The outstanding success of the animated film, Happy Feet, has further reinforced the popular appeal.


; Characteristics of tap dance
Main article: Tap dance technique
Tap dancers make frequent use of syncopation. Choreographies typically start on the eighth beat, or between the eighth and the first count. Another aspect of tap dancing is improvisation. This can either be done with music and follow the beats provided or without musical accompaniment, otherwise known as a capella dancing. Hoofers are tap dancers who dance only with their legs, making a louder, more grounded sound. This kind of tap dancing and his but, also called "rhythm tap", is typically found in cities or poor areas, but this is not always the case especially with such a wide [variety] of styles spreading throughout the world. Steve Condos rose out of his humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, PA to become a master in rhythmic tap. His innovative style influenced the work of Gregory Hines, Savion Glover and Marshall Davis, Jr. The majority of hoofers, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Savion Glover, and Gregory Hines, are black dancers. Dancers like Fred Astaire provided a more ballroom look to tap dancing, while Gene Kelly used his extensive ballet training to make tap dancing incorporate all the parts of the ballet.

Common tap steps include the shuffle, flap, cramp roll, buffalo, Maxie Ford, time steps, pullbacks, and wings.
;Tap dance and the Internet
Tap dance and information about it has spread quickly over the internet. The Tap Dance Homepage is the currently the most extensive tap dance web site available with information about tap dance events, steps, videos, tap dancers, and anything else you would want to know about tap dancing. The National Tap Ensemble also has a very extensive site including a huge FAQ section that is quite informative. In terms of video clips, lots of new sites are popping up. Unitedtaps.com has the world's largest free online tap video dictionary with over 275 steps available for viewing. TapMoves.com is a new site that allows any tap dancer to upload videos of them tap dancing and to comment on and rate other tappers' videos as well. Also there is a monthly online tap show called Garage Tap that features guest tappers and interviews, tapping on location, new steps, combinations and tap news. You can buy a progam an tap along with the dancers online if you so please. Finally, Off Jazz Dance World offers video clips of many legendary hoofers and tappers including Jimmy Slyde, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly.

Tap has been brought into the new millennium by the indie-pop band Tilly and the Wall who features a tap dancer, Jamie Williams taping out their only percussion part