A Night Out

Imagine a dark, humid club with flashing lights and a dancefloor, with loud music playing and people sweating moving to the rhythm into the wee hours of the night. What kind of music do you think they’re listening to? Techno? House? DnB?

It’s the type of music to make anyone get up and dance – or at the very least move their hips from side-to-side. Music carried by the percussion and a double-beat, I am talking about cumbia music. Though we may not all know it by name, we’ve all heard cumbia being played at least once in our lives. Whether it was coming from your Latino-neighbor’s home late at night or in a hispanic market, when you hear it it’s undeniable.

It is a genre of music associated with life. It is highly energized and rhythmic, hypnotic, and very simple to dance to. I know it is because as a non-dancer, cumbia is one of the few genres of music I’m not too embarrassed to move to.

History

Simply put, cumbia is a folkloric genre of rhythm and dance from Colombia. Whether it predates pre-Columbian times is up for debate, but generally speaking, it’s been around since the early 19th century according to written accounts. It’s an influential genre with deep roots, however, those roots are not easily traced.

Controversy

The controversy surrounding cumbia has to do with its history, namely, whether it comes from Indiginous Colombians or Africans brought over as slaves. Currently, there’s a lot of going back and forth between folklorists and musicologists on this essential piece of its history. On one hand you have experts claiming that “cumbia” comes from the African Bantu root kumbe, which means “to dance”; while others claim it comes from the Tupi-Guarani word cumbi, which means “murmuring, noise.”

Their arguments are as follows: Those who believe that cumbia came from Africa point to a small Carribean colony known as Cartagena that was made up of Afro-Colombian slaves. It is said that in Cartagena was where African and Indigenous music mixed, creating the prototype of cumbia as we know it today.

Those who oppose this belief argue that if cumbia came from African rhythms, then cumbia-like music would have been present in the United States and other countries that had significant African slave populations.

But regardless of what the experts argue over, it’s fair to say that cumbia is Colombian. Whether it came from Africa or not, I think that the people of Colombia should feel great pride knowing that their music has traveled all over the Americas.

The Music

Since its humble beginnings, cumbia has been a music to get together and dance to because of its upbeat sound. The sensations can be attributed to the many different instruments typically used. Traditionally, cumbia has a pretty standard assortment of instruments. They include: the tambor alegre and llamador, which are single-head drums, tambora (tambourine), a flute called a gaita, maracas, and the guache, which is a hollow tube with seeds inside.

As cumbia evolved, so did the instruments used to play it. As it made its way through various different countries, each of those counties added something to it. Because of this, cumbia is a very popular music with many different styles and subgenres.

Variations of Cumbia

Although cumbia has had its roots in Colombia for centuries, it was inevitable that over time other countries would take notice.

In the 1940s it first arrived in Peru, where it was paired together with the electric guitar, thus creating the foundation for Peruvian Cumbia. Soon after that, virtually every country from Argentina to the U.S. adopted the genre and created their own variation.

The original cumbia, as played in Colombia, is typically played with acoustic instruments and often contain no lyrics.

Below are a few of the most popular variations of cumbia music.

Colombian Cumbia

This genre spans a wide range of subgenres either created in Colombia or in other countries.

Notable artists include: Aniceto Molina, Calixto Ochoa, Lucho Bermudez, Lisandro Meza, Sonora Dinamita and Petrona Martinez.

Peruvian Cumbia

As stated above, cumbia first entered this country in the 1940s and was almost immediately paired with the guitar. Due to the musical direction that Peru was headed to at the time, the guitars were often used to play surf-rock, which again mingled with the cumbia to form a style specific to Peru. This fusion is sometimes called chicha.

Some notable Peruvian artists include: Los Chipis, Los Cariñosos, Los Hijos del Sol, Grupo Maravilla, Los Walkers and Grupo Genesis.

Mexican Cumbia
Though there are many styles of Mexican cumbia, most notably there are cumbias sonideras and cumbias norteñas.

Cumbias sonideras feature electronic instrumentation as well as the use of the guacharaca, which is a tube-like instrument with ridges that are scraped with a metal comb. Cumbia sonideras also heavily feature a DJ giving commentary or shoutouts to the players of the group.

Some notable artists include: Los Angeles Azules, Celso Piña, Grupo Kual, Grupo Sonador and Grupo G.

Cumbias norteñas are from the northern region of Mexico and feature more ranchera influenced sounds like the use of the accordion. In general, the tempo of the music is a lot slower.

Some notable artists include: Ramon Ayala, Los Plebeyos, Fito Olivares y Su Grupo, Banda Machos and E Arenas.

Final Thoughts

These are just a few of the main genres that I’ve personally listened to. Cumbia is such a wide genre of music that there’s such a thing as cumbia rap and anything else you can imagine. But even though there’s many variations of this (relatively speaking) simple style of music, regardless of the style, one can always distinguish when cumbia is cumbia.

Its uplifting sound never ceases to lift me up whenever I’m feeling down. It’s music that gives you energy and motivation, perfect for weekend cleaning sessions.