Cabaret Songs

Essay from the year 2001 in the subject Philosophy - Practical (Ethics Aesthetics Culture Nature Right ...) grade: R. Serge Denisoff Award for Bes language: English abstract: Cabaret songs have been in existence for a little more than a cen¬tury which makes the genre surveyable. The reasons for its former pop¬ularity and recent decline in Europe and for its continued popularity in the USA can be discerned. If however we are asked for a precise definition of what a cabaret song is - as compared to other kinds of songs¬ e.g. pop songs or jazz songs we soon find ourselves confronted with considerable difficulties. The simplest imaginable answer that a cabaret song is a song performed in a cabaret or nightclub of a certain originally European type is not necessarily true. Cabaret songs can be heard in music halls in movies and on recordings of all kinds. As we shall see we aim with the term at a certain style of performance rather than song even though obviously not every kind of text can be performed as a cabaret song.