Rumba

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For other uses, see Rumba (disambiguation).

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. The so-called rumba rhythm, a variation of the African standard pattern or clave rhythm, is the additive grouping of an eight pulse bar (one 4/4 measure) into 3+3+2 or, less often, 3+5 (van der Merwe 1989, p.321). Its variants include the bossa nova rhythm. Original Cuban rumba is highly polyrhythmic, and as such is often far more complex than the examples cited above.

Ballroom Rumba and Rhumba

Main article: Rumba (dance)

There are several ballroom dances which fall under Rumba (also spelled Rhumba) and Bolero, based on Cuban Rumba and Son. In American-style ballroom dancing, bolero is basically a slow version of the International-style back-and-forth (also known as slotted) rumba but without the hip or Cuban motion and with added rise and fall. Ballroom rumba is danced in either a box-step style or a back and forth style with the hip motion. Also, still another variant of Rumba music and dance was popularized in the United States in 1930s, which was almost twice as fast, as exemplified by the popular tune, The Peanut Vendor. This type of "Big Band Rumba" was also known as Rhumba. The latter term still survives, with no clearly agreed upon meaning; one may find it applied to Ballroom, Big Band, and Cuban rumbas. Rumba is also referred to as a "woman's dance" because it absolutely presents the women's body line beautifully. The interaction, emotion and soft rhythm between the partners make another appropriate name called "Love Dance."

Gypsy Rumba

In the 1990s the French group Gypsy Kings of Spanish descent became a popular New Flamenco group by playing Rumba Flamenca (or rumba gitana, Catalan rumba) music.

Cuban Rumba

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, danzón and (unofficially) son montuno became seen as "the" national music for Cuba, and the expression of Cubanismo. Rumberos reacted by mixing the two genres in the 1930s, 40s and 50s; by the mid-40s, the genre had regained respect, especially the guaguanco style.

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

There are several rhythms of the Rumba family, and associated styles of dance:

• Yambú (slow; the dance often involving mimicking old men and women walking bent)
• Guaguancó (medium-fast, often flirtatious, involving pelvic thrusts by the male dancers, the vacunao)
• Columbia (fast, aggressive and competitive, generally danced by men only, occasionally mimicking combat or dancing with knives)
• Columbia del Monte (very fast)

All of these share the instrumentation (3 conga drums or cajones, claves, palitos and / or guagua, lead singer and coro; optionally chekeré and cowbells), the heavy polyrhythms, and the importance of clave.

African Rumba

Rumba, like salsa and some other Caribbean and South American sounds have their rhythmic roots to varying degrees in African musical traditions, having been brought there by African slaves. In the late 1930s and early 1940s in the Congos, especially in Leopoldville (later renamed Kinshasa), musicians developed a music known as rumba, based largely upon Cuban rhythms. Due to an expanding market, Cuban music was becoming widely available throughout Africa and even Miriam Makeba had her start singing for a group called "The Cuban Brothers". Musicians in the Congo, perhaps recognizing the strong Congolese influence present in Afro-Cuban music were especially fond of the new Cuban sound.

This brand of African rumba became popular in Africa in 1950s. Some of the most notable bands were Franco Luambo's OK Jazz and Grand Kalle's African Jazz. These bands spawned well known rumba artists such as Sam Mangwana, Dr Nico Kasanda and Tabu Ley Rochereau, who pioneered Soukous, the genre into which African rumba evolved in the 1960s. Soukous is still sometimes referred to as rumba.

George Gerswhin wrote a an overture for orchestra featuring and originally titled Rumba . The name of the work was eventually changed to the Cuban Overture .

Rumba rhythm

The rhythm which is known now as "rumba rhythm" was popular in European music beginning in the 1500s until the later Baroque, with classical music era composers preferring syncopations such as 3+2+3. It reappeared in the nineteenth century. (ibid, p.272) Examples include:

 

References

• van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.

Video

• Documentary 52': RUMBA
• Documentary 52': Zaiko Langa Langa