Charleston

What it means

The Charleston is a fast social dance in duple meter that became one of the best-known fad dances of the Jazz Age in the United States during the 1920s. It is named after the city of Charleston, South Carolina, where its roots are thought to lie in African American dance traditions. It is characterized by fast, opposing leg and arm movements and an energetic, syncopated feel.

Musically, the dance is accompanied by its own rhythmic figure, itself known as the “Charleston rhythm”: a syncopated accent typically falling on the first beat and the upbeat eighth note before the second beat.

Musical use

Beyond the dance itself, the Charleston rhythm became a fixture of jazz and swing vocabulary, especially in the interplay between horn sections and the rhythm section. It appears in big band arrangements of the swing era as well as in later jazz styles, where the characteristic syncopation is used as a rhythmic quotation or stylistic device.

The Charleston should be distinguished from ragtime, out of whose syncopated rhythms it partly developed: ragtime is primarily a style of piano composition, whereas the Charleston is a dance with its own movement vocabulary that absorbs ragtime and early jazz elements. It differs from the foxtrot through its considerably faster tempo and its more strongly syncopated, more energetic movement.

Performance practice

When playing the Charleston rhythm, bring out the syncopation deliberately without smoothing it over, so the distinctive “push-pull” character remains audible. Keep the tempo consistently brisk and light, since the effect of the dance and its rhythm depends on energy and forward drive.