Rumba

Rumba is both a family of music rhythms and a dance style that originated in Africa and traveled via the slave trade to Cuba and the New World, and later to Barcelona (Spain), where it was adopted by Gypsies and turned into a flamenco style.

There is an altogether different dance, called rhumba in Anglo-Saxon countries and bolero in Spanish-speaking countries. Some dancers considered rumba (or bolero) the most erotic and sensual Latin dance, for its relatively slow rhythm and the hip movement.

Rumba
Stylistic origins:	African, native and Spanish music
Cultural origins:	African slaves in Havana and Matanzas
Typical instruments:	Quinto and tumbadores drums and palitos
Mainstream popularity:	Significant in Latin America and Africa, rare elsewhere
Subgenres
Guaguancó, columbia, and yambú
Fusion genres
Chachacha - Salsa music

Cuban Rumba

History

Rumba arose in Havana in the 1890s. As a sexually-charged Afro-Cuban dance, rumba was often suppressed and restricted because it was viewed as dangerous and lewd.

Later, Prohibition in the United States caused a flourishing of the relatively-tolerated cabaret rumba, as American tourists flocked to see crude sainetes (short plays) which featured racial stereotypes and generally, though not always, rumba.

Perhaps because of the mainstream and middle-class dislike for rumba, son montuno became seen as "the" national music for Cuba, and the expression of Cubanisimo. Rumberos reacted by mixing the two genres in the 30s, 40s and 50s; by the mid-40s, the genre had regained respect, especially the guaguanco style.

In the 1990s the French group Gypsy Kings became a popular New Flamenco group by playing rumba flamenco music.

Characteristics

Rumba is sometimes confused with salsa, with which it shares origins and essential movements.

There are several rhythms of the Rumba family:

• Yambu
• Guagancó
• Columbia
• Columbia del Monte

Bolero rhythm begins with one beat pause, then three equally long steps. Salsa misses one beat, and counts quick-quick-slow, where slow is a movement as long as both quick steps together.

Rumba is thought to have contributed to the origin of the cha-cha-cha, and indeed most figures (if not all, somehow) can be reinterpreted in cha-cha-cha.