In Cuba this fusion led to styles such as son and rumba, in the United States it led to blues and jazz, in Brazil it paved the way for samba. In Colombia the fusion of African communities brought there as slaves by the Spanish and prehispanic communities led to cumbia.
Cumbia was originally popular in coastal communities where this synthesis of cultures was most prominent, but as it began to spread to the rest of Colombia in the s, more hispanic influences emerged.
Each of these individual cultures contributed a different musical element to cumbia music. The African influence can be heard through the percussion instruments a combination of hand drums, stick drums and maracas and the rhythms they play, while the prehispanic elements are most evident in the gaita flutes heard in traditional cumbia music.
The European influence is most evident in slightly later renditions of the style when instruments such as guitars, basses and horns were added as well as the fact that Spanish has been the dominant language in most modern manifestations.
The first is a traditional song called El Pescador The Fisherman. As mentioned previously, the ensemble is dominated by percussion with tambora, llamador, maracas and two alegre drums one playing a more improvised role. Aside from the large percussion, we have Toto La Momposina herself on lead vocals and a large backing chorus of male and female vocalists. While Toto takes the melody and tells the story through her vocals, the chorus provides a rich harmonic backing.
All the instruments are acoustic which makes sense given that this was originally folk music played in small, usually poor communities. Like most early cumbia music, this song is monophonic in the verses and homophonic in the choruses with the lead vocals singing in between the choral phrases.
The percussion keeps a constant pulse throughout, a feature of African music as a whole. Also, the video itself has over ,, views since , and Los Angeles Azules have almost 5 million subscribers on YouTube.
The percussion section is still large but features more modern Afro-Cuban instruments such as congas and timbales as well as guiras played by backing vocalists. While there are no maracas, the rhythm played by the guiras approximates this sound fairly closely. The congas play a blend between the llamador and the tambora rhythm, while the timbales play the rhythm usually played by the rim of the tambora as well as fills towards the end of musical phrases.
There is a large rhythm section of electric bass guitar, keyboards and accordian a common instrument in Mexican cumbia. The bass guitar outlines a rhythm similar to that played by the bass notes of the tambora drum beats 3 and 4 of each bar of cut time being the prominent beats , while the keyboards outline the llamador backbeat beats 2 and 4 of each bar.
The accordion plays a similar role to the brass two trumpets and two trombones and plays melodic lines towards the end of each vocal phrase. The above examples give us a clear insight into the journey cumbia has taken, from small coastal communities in northern Colombia to massive arena concerts in Mexico and beyond.
This amazing style of music has come a long way, although it still holds true to its musical origins. Our next article will go more deeply into cumbia rhythms and look at these from a drummers perspective. Recommended Listening. With such a strong roster and a fine business sense, they were masters of putting out compilations featuring their artists — normally featuring scantily-clad women on the covers.
With Colombian musicians travelling all over the world, cumbia soon became known all over Latin America, but it was in Peru where the style took on a whole new life. Instead of playing the lead melody on accordion, flute or a brass instrument the Peruvians used electric guitar. The result was a new psychedelic incarnation of the rhythm with hypnotic guitar riffs and clattering percussion. When the Colombians heard what Peru was doing with cumbia they wanted their own slice of the pie and started their own guitar-led groups.
Afrosound were one of the finest. This in turn was influencing local bands like Cumbia Siglo XX. This style kept the fuzz and wah-wah guitar style that had already been perfected but added vocals sung in the huayno style of the Andes. Disco Dancing, NB: this one is soon to be reissued. Cumbia was reborn in the s as new producers saw how the rhythm could be harnessed in the clubs and nowhere did this explosion take off more than in Buenos Aires where ZZK Records began releasing electronic music influenced equally by cumbia and all the club music that had gone before.
Over the years it has evolved with an increasing influence of Andean folk instruments and mythology. Especially as it begins with his atmospheric remix of a Jose Larralde classic that would later feature in an episode of Breaking Bad and see the movement gain even more traction.
With his Frente Cumbiero project he revitalised cumbia as a style played by a live band, using clarinet and electric guitar as the lead instruments as he created infectious rhythms with the added influences of dub, Ethio-jazz, hip-hop and porro brass bands to help put cumbia back on the agenda. The digital cumbia boom that began in Argentina made its way to Peru where producers there saw an affinity with ayahuasca rituals and Andean folk songs. There are a number of fine electronic music producers working in Peru especially in Lima but none have had quite the impact as Dengue Dengue Dengue!
Your wishlist is empty. View Wishlist. Cart 0. Written by Russ Slater. Dengue Dengue Dengue! There have been various instrumental additions, developments, and changes over time that have been difficult to pinpoint, and moreover, it is important to note that each coastal pueblo creates its own unique local manifestations of the form, as is common with almost all traditional rhythms and dances. The dance element of cumbia is said to express love between a man and a woman.
Through their movements putting on and taking of their hats with one hand behind their back , men try to lure the women toward them, a movement that is often followed by the two spinning around and then apart from one another simultaneously. Today the female cumbia dancers usually wear long skirts with sequins sewn at home , flower headdresses, earrings, and lots of makeup, while the men generally wear white shirts and white pants, a red bandana, and a sombrero.
Legend has it that cumbia functioned as a courtship dance between Afro-Colombian men and Native Colombian women when they began to marry one another.
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