A dance of Cuban origin which became popular as a ballroom dance in the USA and Europe in the 1930s. Its distinctive rhythm, often played on maracas or bongos, is the tresillo, a bar of eight quavers/eighth-notes divided 3 + 3 + 2.
Ballroom Rumba and Rhumba
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. Rumba is also referred to as a "woman's dance" because it absolutely presents the women's body line beautifully.
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.
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.
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;
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.
This brand of African rumba became popular in Africa in 1950s. 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.
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. (ibid, p.272) Examples include:
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