Military cadence
Work song sung by armed forces during training / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Military cadence?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
In the United States armed services, a military cadence or cadence call is a traditional call-and-response work song sung by military personnel while running or marching. In the United States, these cadences are sometimes called jody calls or jodies, after Jody, a recurring character who figures in some traditional cadences; Jody refers to the person with whom a servicemember’s significant other cheats while they are deployed.
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Requiring no instruments to play, they are counterparts in oral military folklore of the military march. As a sort of work song, military cadences take their rhythms from the work being done (compare sea shanty). Many cadences have a call and response structure in which one servicemember initiates a line, and the remaining SMs complete it, thus instilling teamwork and camaraderie for completion. The cadence calls move to the beat and rhythm of the normal speed (quick time) march or running-in-formation (double time) march. This serves the purpose of keeping SMs "dressed", moving in step as a unit and in formation, while maintaining the correct beat or cadence.
On top of the psychological effects that cadences produce, they also produce significant physiological effects. Singing a cadence while running or marching helps SMs keep their heads up, take deeper breaths and exhale more forcefully. This increases oxygen to the lungs and gives the body more energy. This in turn makes the unit healthier and better prepared.[1]
The word "cadence" was applied to these work songs because of an earlier meaning, in which it meant the number of steps a marcher or runner took per minute. The cadence was set by a drummer or Sergeant and discipline was extremely important, as keeping the cadence directly affected the travel speed of infantry. There were other purposes: the close-order drill was a particular cadence count for the complex sequence of loading and firing a musket. In the Revolutionary War, Baron von Steuben notably imported European battlefield techniques which persist, greatly modified, to this day.