Humppa is a fast, cheerful Finnish couple dance and music style with a pumping “oom-pa” beat — the sound of summer dance pavilions.
Humppa grew out of the foxtrot and one-step that reached Finland with jazz-age dance bands in the early 20th century. Finnish musicians sped them up and gave them a strong, bouncing off-beat, and the result became a style of its own — its name echoes the “hump-pa, hump-pa” of the bass and the drums. Couples move quickly around the floor with simple walking and running steps, so almost anyone can join in, but the speed makes it a real workout. Humppa became a staple of Finland's open-air dance pavilions (lavatanssit), and in the 1990s the band Eläkeläiset made it famous again by turning international pop and rock hits into humppa.
