Cumbia began on Colombia's coast and ended up across the Americas
Cumbia is one of Latin America's great travelling sounds. It grew on the Colombian coast from a colonial-era meeting of Indigenous, African and Spanish traditions, is said to trace back to Afro-Colombian funeral customs, and has since spawned regional versions from Panama to Texas. Its scratchy chu-chucu-chu pulse gives it away.
The classic line-up is built on three drums, the tambora, tambor alegre and llamador, plus three flutes, including the gaita hembra, the gaita macho and the flauta de millo. The rhythm people recognise comes from the guacharaca, a scraped instrument that produces that simple chu-chucu-chu figure. Brass and piano are often added on top.
Colombian cumbia is treated as the parent of every other variety. Its heritage mixes African influences, brought by people enslaved under Spanish colonisation, with Spanish folk song and Indigenous elements, all fused over the long years of conquest and colonial rule. Panama has its own cumbia, a folk dance and music created by enslaved people of African descent and later blended with Indigenous and European culture, and most Hispanic American countries have developed regional versions with their own quirks.
As a dance it is performed in couples and acts out a man courting a woman. On the Atlantic coast the woman carries a lit candle in her right hand, both to light her way and, in one reading, as something to fend off her partner's advances. Dancing with candles is a custom that began in Colombia. Cumbia started life as a street dance and later moved into ballrooms.
From the 1950s musicians arranged, orchestrated and added lyrics to it, moving away from the traditional form, and the genre even lost popularity for a spell in the 1970s. Through the 20th century migration, broadcasting and musical trade carried it beyond Colombia. Mexico developed many subgenres, making cumbia central to its urban popular culture, while Chicano musicians in Texas mixed it with Tejano, Conjunto and pop to create Cumbia Tejana. Scholars credit its spread to adaptability: newcomers add local instruments and styles but keep the recognisable percussion.
Source: Cumbia
