Rumba
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.
Ballroom Rumba and Rhumba
There are several Social Dances which can be subsumed under Rumba; Rumba itself (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.
American Ballroom rumba ("ballroom" understood in the more general meaning of that word; in the stricter sense we speak of ballroom or latin american dances as two differnet kind of social or competitive dances in Europe) is danced in either a box-step style (which in fact is called "Cuban Rumba" by dancing teachers) or a back and forth style with different hip motions supporting the movements. In Europe, only the latter form has survived (perhaps with the exception of the preliminary use for the very beginner) the "Rumba wars" of the 60`s between french an british dancing teachers, who supported the two versions respectively.
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. This type of "Big Band Rumba" was also known as Rhumba. The latter term still survives, with no clearly agreed upon meaning; one may find it applied to Ballroom, Big Band, and Cuban rumbas.
Confusion about the style of rumba may arise if three essential facts are ignored: First of course is the speed of music, which has internationally decreased significantly since the fifties. That eliminates figures which have become too quick for the slower music and created new ones. Secondly, performing the dance requires attention from the side of the teacher and leads to very different looking appearances on the floor. And thirdly, figures are constantly wandering from one dance to another, because advanced dancers always search for something new.
Characteristics
With the exception perhaps of Paso Doble, the stylized "bull fight" hardly any of the western world Social Dances is as clearly defined as Rumba. Rumba is always - by journalists and teachers alike - referred to as a "woman's dance" because it absolutely presents the women's body shape, arms, foot and leg lines beautifully. The man should look interesting enough, though, for the lady to try to impress him. These interactions, demonstration of emotions and the mutual dependency of soft rhythms and quick movements, the change of movements together, even a cuddenly way and then - suddenly - away from the partner, make another appropriate name: "Love Dance". Or because the priority of movements is with the lady, the "Dance of seduction". The "love" is however to be achieved, it is not necessarily already there.
Technique of the international rumba
Every rise and fall of the feet is to be avoided. Considering the character of the dance it does not make sense. Even though we spoke of emotions: Without the proper hip movements the supposedly advanced dancer may seam odd on the floor. "Slotted" dance however does not mean, that your movements are meant to be small. In does mean that the size of a step corresponds with the hip movement which precedes and supports it. A full description of one step might be: If you want e.g. do a back basic step, you firstly have to "settle" the hip, allowing the right part of it to lower. Secondly you rotate the left part of the hip to the right, left hip movement ending slightly back, hip is now in a diagonal position. Now this diagonal position is turned a quarter turn to right while the right leg is led backward showing a nice knee. And then the weight is transfered backward.
Figures
Basic figures are comprises outof the very Basic Steps mentioned above or besides those figures e.g. the turn of the lady out of closed hold into e.g. the "New Yorker", supposedly dance firstly there, an opening of both partners to one side, holding each other only with one hand; bodies turning one quarter, but feet three eights, ending in the "Latin Cross" foot position, which by the way is characteristic for the dance. There is also a figure called "Hip Twist", where, by closing his feet following a backward movement, the hip movemennt of the man initiates a quarter turn of the lady to right ending in the "Fan" position to then do a "Hockeystick" or "Alamana". In the "Natural Top" and "Reverse Top" figures the couple trun to right or left while keeping close hold, while in "Opening Out" the lady turns an extra quarter to right. (Opposite of Fan, where she ends left). Dance sport competitors don`t usually use basic figures but choreography which hardly let an element of basic show trying to impress adjudicators and spectators alike.
Note: There is a basic movement called "Cuban Break". Feet in split position stay on the same place and only the hip movements are made. A variant of this is called "Cuccaracha", sideward steps without full transfer of weight.
Technique and Music
International or competitive danced rumba is dance on counting of "2,3,4 and 1". Nowadays we speak of less than 30 bpm. Beginners can do a sideward step on 1 to come into the right movement. Beginning the Basic Movement on 1 is considered out of music (at least in Europe). The Basic Step is beginning e.g. with a step with the left foot forward on count 2 for the man. However, due to the afore mentioned hip movements, which take some time, the actual step or turn of an more andvanced dancer - and corresponding lead - is danced between the 2 and 3, on the half beat, or better still almost before the next beat; that makes the turn faster and therefore look more exciting. And we to get the moments of silence which help to alternate the look of the sequence of figures. In an still more elaborate approach of combinig music and dance the dancers will also consider longer cohesive parts of the music "phrases" or "additive rhytms" as significant and execute figures or poses corresponding to the music instead of just doing the "routine" (an other, somehow telling expression for choreography) no matter what the music does. In general should the theme of the dance be preserved in advanced choregraphy: rumba is never aerobics.
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. As a sexually charged Afro-Cuban dance, rumba was often suppressed and restricted because it was viewed as dangerous and lewd.
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.
There seems to exist an historical habit of american and also british dancing teachers to "castrate" - so to say - explicitly erotical or wild dances; compare how the black´s Lindy Hop of the 20´s was given the lame brother of 30`s Jitterbug, or the wild again Jitterbug of the 40`s was mutated into Jive; the Rock ´n´Roll of the 50`s died out in the US and was transformed in Central Europe to a kind of precursor of powerful aerobic dancing with complicated acrobatics, and on the other side a into dance called Boogie-Woogie, which resembles the old 50ties Rock`n`Roll Dance.
Therefore dancing teachers were becoming able to "mainstream" and consequently better propagate the revised dances on to a white clientel. We have to assume that important movements and figures of the original rumba were elimated in the US social dance environment. That was not unwise however, considering the unwillingness shown by many white people to do hip-movements, considered mainly in the US a black or latino invention; a different (to avoid the word "inferior" ) physical fitness of todays rich-countries` populations - regardless of race - is frequently displayed not only on the dancing floor. However, in the recent years some european dancing teacher have begun stylizing their instruction as "authentic cuban" as something valuable.
Template:Cubanmusic Perhaps because of that 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. Rumberos reacted by mixing the two genres in the 1930s, 40s and 50s; by the mid-40s, the genre had regained respect, especially the guaguanco style.
Rumba and some relatives
Rumba is sometimes confused with salsa, with which it shares origins, the four beats on one basic step and the character of that step but indeed few other movements. The hip movents of Salsa is however different due to the faster music; in the US Salsa is often danced without much hip-movement as well as in the case of rumba.
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; optionally chekeré and cowbells), the heavy polyrhythms, and the importance of clave.
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. Due to an expanding market, Cuban music was becoming widely available throughout Africa and even Miriam Makeba had her start singing for a group called "The Cuban Brothers". Musicians in the Congo, perhaps recognizing the strong Congolese influence present in Afro-Cuban music were especially fond of the new Cuban sound.
This brand of African rumba became popular in Africa in 1950s. Some of the most notable bands were Franco Luambo's OK Jazz and Grand Kalle's African Jazz. 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. Soukous is still sometimes referred to as rumba.
George Gerswhin wrote an overture for orchestra featuring and originally titled Rumba . The name of the work was eventually changed to the Cuban Overture .
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. It reappeared in the nineteenth century. (ibid, p.272) Examples include:
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.
- ISTD [Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing](editor): Latin American Rumba, London 1999
- Laird, Walter: Technique of Latin Dancing, Brighton (England) 1998
