A heavily African-influenced form of secular entertainment unique to Cuba. A complex and highly improvisatory form involving song, dance, and performance on various percussion instruments, traditional rumba developed in the mid-1800s in the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. Many sub-genres and regional variants exist.
Informal "get-together" combining African drumming and Spanish or African vocal traditions with improvised dancing and singing. Rumba also refers to the rhythms played at these gatherings. Those rhythms (guaguanco, columbia and yambu) are played on three congas and / or cajon.
( room bah) is a family of social rhythms and dances from Cuba. The oldest form is Yambu (yahm bu), a slow and stately dance often done by elders, or people dancing like elders. Guaguanco (wa wan ko) is a medium to fast tempo music for a playful courtship dance in which the man and woman move together and apart and the man tries to slyly introduce the vacunao (va ku now) or pelvic thrust. The woman coyly resists and finally relents and receives the man's energy. The third form of Rumba is the Columbia (koh lum bee ah). It is played with a strong "6 feel" and is a men's pantomime and acrobatic dance. Instrumentation for folkloric Rumba consists of three conga drums, properly know as tumbadoras ( tume bah dohr ahs ), claves ( kla vehs), cascara ( kas kar rah) or gua gua ( wah wah) - sticks played on a drum shell or piece of bamboo , a metal shaker called madruga (mah dru gah) and voices. Rumba is sung in Spanish with many African words, primarily from Yoruba and Congolese languages. Outstanding Rumba artists are "Los Munequitos de Mantanzas" and "Los Papines".
Three forms: Guaguancó, Yambú, and Columbia. An Afro-Cuban musical form comprised of drumming, call-and-response vocals and dancing.
syncopated music in duple time for dancing the rumba
a rhythmic syncopated Cuban folk dance in duple time
a ballroom dance based on the Cuban folk dance
a type of medium-to-fast polyrhythmic Afro-Cuban song and dance, with a three-part form of introduction, improvised verses, and repetitive call-and-response
A slow- to medium-tempo Latin American dance in 4/4 time, which is characterized by sensual, provocative movements and gestures, Latin-style hip motion, and playful and flirtatious interplay between lead and follow.
Latin-American dance of Afro-Cuban origin, in duple meter with syncopated rhythms.
a Cuban dance which, about 1930, became a popular ballroom dance in the United States and Europe. It is of African origin, with strong emphasis on rhythm, complicated syncopation, and indefinite repetitions of an eight measure theme, while melody and text are of subordinate importance. The dancing emphasizes movements of the body rather than of the feet. sacred music: music that was specifically written for use in church services
A Cuban folkloric secular form, consisting of drumming, dancing and call-and-response singing which contains both African and Spanish roots. There are three styles of rumba : the yambú, guaguancó and columbia .
Cuban derived musical genre (19th C. ); couple-dance genre Cuba, Congo
Most of what Americans call rumbas were forms of the son which swept Cuba in the 1920s. The Cuban rumba was a secular drum form with many variants, including the guaguancó and the Columbia, though modern musicians tend to regard all theses as separate. Its descendent variations can be heard in New York parks any summer weekend played by groups called rumbas or rumbones. By analogy, a percussion passage in a salsa number, or a percussion-only jam session, is sometimes called a rumba or rumbón.
a ballroom dance fad of the 1930s, closer in sound to the son; popularized by the likes of Xavier Cugat; also Afro-Cuban urban drum dances (colúmbia, guaguancó, and yambú.)
Cuban-influenced Zairean style that generated soukous
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). Original Cuban rumba is highly polyrhythmic, and as such is often far more complex than the examples cited above.
Rumba is a dance organically related to the rumba genre of Afro-Cuban music. Throughout the history one may trace several styles of dances called "Rumba".
Rumba is a 1935 film starring George Raft as a Cuban dancer and Carole Lombard as a Manhattan socialite. The movie was directed by Marion Gering and is considered an unsuccessful follow-up to Raft and Lombard's smash hit Bolero the previous year.