2, is a fantasy composition for piano written by American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk during a delirium of typhoid fever in the French town of Clermont-sur-l'Oise in the summer of 1848.
[1] Dedicated "à sa Majesté Isabelle II, Reine des Espagnes",[2] it is the first of the so-called set of four "Louisiana Creole pieces" that Gottschalk composed between 1848 and 1851.
According to the Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago, the term "bamboula" refers to "a kind of vigorous African-based dance with singing and drumming", possibly from the Southern Kikongo (Congo) language, in which it means "a word which transfers the force of external things into oneself"; and in the Jola languages "bombolong [fr]", "war dance" (Eastern Kikongo: "ignite").
[4] Being based on two Creole melodies (Musieu Bainjo and Quan' patate la cuite),[1][5] Bamboula was published with the subtitle Danse des nègres at the Bureau Central de la Musique on 22 April 1849 by Escudier (a Paris publisher); many unauthorized copies were issued in Europe shortly thereafter.
With a duple 24 time signature and an Allegro tempo marking, the composition features many shifting moods and virtuosic passages.