patel, Feb 19, 2018 [first released in 1976]
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Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents information about and examples of the double clap that is found in numerous music genres.
The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are featured in these videos and thanks to the producers and publishers of these videos on YouTube. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-low-country-clap-also-known-as.html for the closely related pancocojams post entitled "The Double Clap (information & examples from Gospel, R&B, & Pop Music)."
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INFORMATION ABOUT "THE DOUBLE CLAP" (ALSO KNOWN AS "THE SOUL CLAP")
Online Excerpt #1
From https://overland.org.au/2019/11/clap-back-pop-musics-love-affair-with-the-double-clap/ "Clap back: pop music’s love affair with the double clap" published by Aimee Knight, 12 November 2019
..."In the 1960s, girl groups and solo starlets began using double claps to evoke the schoolyard sassiness that bubbles in The Angels’ ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’, as well as dance-songs like Little Eva’s ‘The Loco-Motion’ and Shirley Ellis’ ‘The Clapping Song’. The latter, with its pat-a-cake-style instructions, seems deliberately designed to infantilise its 36-year-old singer. Surprising, then, that it only took a few years for the double clap to come of age, thanks to its virulent use in 1970s soul, funk and R&B jams.
From the speculative history of Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ to the barometric fantasy of ‘It’s Raining Men’ by The Weather Girls, double claps – when performed and recorded by real, live musicians – infused disco’s synthesiser hits with the primal slap of humanity. The snappy flourishes of Kool & the Gang’s ‘Ladies’ Night’ are a dry yet fanciful siren’s call. Meanwhile, the hand claps in George Benson’s ‘Give Me the Night’ reverberate with such fervour that they were surely recorded in a cavernous, abandoned roller-rink. Either way, it’s party time, and everyone’s invited.
[...]
In the 1980s, chart toppers like Madonna’s ‘Holiday’, The Clash’s ‘Rock the Casbah’, and Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ featured digital double claps created on nifty units like the Simmons’ Claptrap. Moreover, care of the era’s predilection for electronic drum machines and gated reverb, double snare hits are often misremembered as double claps, especially when performers flagrantly clapped along in the accompanying music videos. See: Prince in ‘Little Red Corvette’, Hall & Oates in ‘Private Eyes’.
Synthesised and recorded double claps persisted into the nineties, staple to all manner of hip-hop tracks, from the visceral ‘Got Your Money’ by Ol’ Dirty Bastard ft. Kelis, to Will Smith’s fantastically plastic ‘Men in Black’ theme (itself a corporate rework of the aforementioned Patrice Rushen song).
Double claps have pepped up other film and TV themes, too.
In 1983, a carefree double clap welcomed folks to Fraggle Rock....
A paean to pop trends and cultural memory, Queen’s
chart-topping single Radio Ga Ga’ is fuelled by an iconic clap-along hook.
Viewers watching the music video today may be surprised to see that singer
Freddie Mercury only incites the crowd to clap during the first chorus, but not
on subsequent rounds – notable, since the impulse now feels inseparable from
the song. When Queen performed it at Live Aid in 1985, some 72,000 people
joined in, perhaps resulting in the largest ever en-masse double clap. In fact,
crowd shots reveal that many of the London punters didn’t want (or couldn’t
tell when) to stop.
Double claps didn’t feed the world that day, and they’ve
likely had their finest hour, but they’re powerful and unpredictable
contagions, all the same. Someone has to love them."
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Online Excerpt #2
From https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/31/double-clap-infectious-disco-rhythm-barbie-kylie "Clap clap! The infectious disco rhythm heard from Barbie to
Kylie", published by Hugh Morris, 31 July 2023
The double handclap – most powerfully deployed in Patrice
Rushen’s Forget Me Nots – is now a staple of pop thanks to Dua Lipa and more.
Its practitioners explain why it’s still so catchy
..."Dua Lipa’s Dance the Night...provides the Barbies’
slick choreography with a gesture that’s very familiar to pop music fans: the
disco double clap.
Like the disco string sound, gated reverb or the orchestra stab, it is traceable through generations of pop.
Made up of two quick claps and usually found at the end of a repeating four- or eight-bar phrase, the motif’s musical function is to gather the energy of the bars before it, and release it into the next. But the double clap feels cheeky, silly and faintly magical – the musical equivalent of waving a magic wand with a big shiny star on the end and watching the next phase of the song appear from nowhere.
[…]
Johnson points to Patrice Rushen’s 1982 song Forget Me Nots
as the classic double clap track…. A sleeper hit deemed a flop by her label
executives, Forget Me Nots earned Rushen a Grammy nomination for best female
R&B performer, and the track has been revisited by successive generations:
in the late 80s, with the trampoline scene in the Tom Hanks movie Big; the 90s,
as the title track of Will Smith’s Men in Black; and the 2020s, in a TikTok
dance where participants would freestyle for a few bars before gravitating back
to the rhythmic hook. Every generation that revisits the track focuses on the
clap, although as Rushen the opening is “actually snap clap – everybody makes
this mistake”. (It changes to two claps later on in the track.)
In turn, Rushen points to its presence in Motown and gospel, and in moments such as the intro to Car Wash, originally released by Rose Royce in 1976. The double clap is “part of the legacy and history of American dance music,” she says, “whether you think of the Latin clave, or pop music, all of it leads back to Africa. Its derivatives, where and how it’s placed – in music that’s particularly for the purpose of movement – that’s where you’ll find the double clap used.” Musically speaking, she adds: “It gives a certain kind of rhythmic pull.” The double clap in Forget Me Nots really pops “because it’s in the clear”, fitting especially well within funk’s sparse rhythmic architecture…..
For younger producers reviving the language of previous pop
generations but undaunted by – or actively seeking – cliche, there is a new
function for the double clap. “It’s almost like a call and response thing”
between audiences and performers, says producer Lucy Tun. (She uses a relation
of the double-clap motif in the rhythmic stabs on her 2020 track Another Week).”…
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SHOWCASE VIDEO #1
Rose Royce's hit R&B song "Car Wash" was first released in 1976. This video is found at the top of this post.
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SHOWCASE VIDEO #2 - EXPLAINED || Hand Clapping: The Rhythm of The Black Church
Black Music Archive,
The Voice: EXPLAINED is a music education docu-series
created by award-winning multi-disciplinary artist Milik Kashad, designed to
educate listeners and viewers on the science and history of music and singing
in an easy-to-understand and engaging way!
This episode focuses on the rhythms of hand clapping
incorporated in traditional Black Gospel music.
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Also, click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mIPenJXF8Q&t=21s for a YouTube video entitled "I miss double clap church songs". That video shows a young Black man seated in his car singing "old school" Gospel songs.
SHOWCASE VIDEO #3-The Double Clap!!
Redinex, Nov. 28, 2021
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Here are a few comments from this short video's discussion thread with numbers added for referencing purposes only)
1. @shawtyblackatl, 2022
"Baby…… if you from the lowcountry of South Carolina this is how we get down"
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Reply
2. @donjuan1942, 2022
"I knew this was South Carolina this the upstate churchin too especially off in the backwoods this got me missing home"
**
Reply
3. @talvistunechi8873, 2022
"North Carolina too"
**
Reply
4. @cedfri, 2023
"We grew double clapping and foot stomping in Mississippi, common in the south"
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SHOWCASE VIDEO #4 -Eddie Floyd Performs "Knock On Wood" at In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul accompanied by the White House band.
infomisa, Aug 26, 2013
Eddie Floyd Performs "Knock On Wood" at In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul accompanied by the White House band.
Notice at 1:37 to around 1:51 in that video Eddy Floyd says "Everybody put your hands together. Gimme a little soul clap". On those words the former President Obama, his wife Michelle, his daughters, and the rest of the audience do a fast double clap.
SHOWCASE VIDEO #5 - Patrice Rushen - Forget Me Nots (Official Video)
Strut Records, July 11, 2019 [This R&B record was first released 1982]
SHOWCASE VIDEO #6 - Fraggle Rock | Opening Theme | The Jim Henson Company
The Jim Henson Company, Apr 22, 2013 #FraggleRock #JimHenson
Fraggle Rock opening title sequence.
The Jim Henson Company has remained an established leader in family entertainment for over 50 years and is recognized worldwide as an innovator in puppetry, animatronics and digital animation. This channel features popular children's shows including Fraggle Rock, Pajanimals, Dinosaur Train, Sid the Science Kid and more!
SHOWCASE VIDEO #7 - Barbie - Dance The Night Scene | HD
Barbie Dance The Night scene full HD dance scene. Song by Dua Lipa. Best movie in the 2023. All rights goes to Warner.
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