Chastushka

Chastushka (Russian: частушка, IPA: [tɕɪsˈtuʂkə], pl. chastushki) is a traditional musical genre of short Russian humorous folk song. Usually associated with high beat frequency, thus the name, coined from Russian: частый in the meaning of "quick". While the root of chastushki can be traced to ancient folklore of dance and wedding songs as well as performances of balagurs (Russian version of minstrels), the genre itself had crystallized fairly recently, in the last third of the 19th century, under the influence of social shifts caused by the abolition of serfdom and industrialization. Spread of the squeezebox in the mid-19th century and its use for the accompaniment created partial separation of chastushki from dance music.

In 1889, Gleb Uspensky was the first researcher to identify the new poetic form and assign the name "chastushki" to it. Typically many chastushki are sung one after another. Chastushki make use of a simple rhyming scheme to convey humorous or ironic content. The singing and recitation of such rhymes were an important part of popular culture of peasants and industrial workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The close equivalent of chastushki in the Western culture is limerick.