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Definition of "habanera" [habanera]

  • A slow Cuban dance. (noun)
  • The music for this dance, in duple time. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "habanera" in a sentence
  • "Featuring classical music, Cuban habanera dance music, pop, jazz and tango."
  • "Scott Joplin and W.C. Handy, among other composers of early jazz, worked with a new sort of syncopation that drew, somewhat, on the rhythm of the habanera, a Cuban dance music that became fashionable enough in 19th-century Europe that it provided the lilting bass line for the famous aria in Bizet 's Carmen."
  • "The most fertile Cuban musical form turned out to be the habanera, a lilting dance form that evolved out of the old French Contre-danse in the years following the Haitian revolution."
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