The estampie "Kalenda Maya" by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras is the most famous example of the genre, its insistent rhythmic repetition and alternating puncta creating a sonic momentum that makes it irresistibly associated with dance and physical movement; Medieval manuscript illustrations show estampies performed at court entertainments with instruments including vielles, lutes, and pipes, confirming the genre's function as entertainment music for aristocratic dancing and feasting; The estampie's structure of repeated puncta with open and closed endings is musically analogous to the poetic device of the refrain: both create the pleasure of return and variation, of familiar material reappearing in a slightly altered form; A student listening to modern performances of medieval estampies should attend to how the rhythmic repetition creates a trance-like quality distinct from the more varied and developmental approach of later Western art music, revealing a different aesthetic relationship to time and pattern; The relationship between estampie and poetic form is most visible in texts that were set to estampie rhythms: the rigid metric pattern imposed by the dance required texts of great rhythmic regularity, showing how musical genres can shape and constrain poetic composition; The estampie is among the earliest surviving examples of instrumental music in the Western tradition, and its study reveals how fundamentally the history of Western music and the history of Western poetry are intertwined, both emerging from the same medieval courtly culture of performance.