Cumbia () is a folkloric genre and dance from Colombia.Colombia Cumbia Retrieved 18 June 2021The Cumbia – Drumset Adaptations of a Traditional Colombian/Panamanian RhythmCheville, Lila, Festivals and Dances of Panama, Panamá: Litho Impresora Panamá, 1977. 187 p.; 22 cm. Page 128-133
The cumbia is the most representative dance of the coastal region in Colombia, and is danced in pairs with the couple not touching one another as they display the amorous conquest of a woman by a man. The couple performing cumbia dances in a circle around a group of musicians, and it involves the woman holding lit candle(s) in her right hand that she uses to push the man away while she holds her skirt in her left. During the dance, the partners do not touch each other, and the man dances while holding a sombrero vueltiao that he tries to put on the woman's head as a representation of amorous conquest. This dance is originally made to depict the battle that the “black man had to fight to conquer an indigenous woman”. The story continues and the dance shows that this leads to a new generation and is depicting the history of the coast of Colombia.
However Cumbia is much more than just a dance; it is “practica cultural” (cultural practice). Cumbia is an umbrella term, and much like vallenato there are many subcategories. The subcategories are many like music, dance, rhythm, and genre. The genre aspect can be split into two things; Cumbia is a “ complex mix of genres with a caribbean-colombian air in binaria subdivision” and “a category of music for Colombian music with a Caribbean flavor”.
Since the 1940s, commercial or modern Colombian cumbia had expanded to the rest of Latin America, and many countries have had their own variants of cumbia after which it became popular throughout the Latin American regions, including in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Most Hispanic American countries have made their own regional version of Cumbia, some of them with their own particularity.
Etymology Most folklorists and musicologists, such as Narciso Garay, Delia Zapata Olivella, and Guillermo Abadia Morales, assume that cumbia is derived from the Bantu root kumbe "to dance", or any other of the many Bantu words with "comb" or "kumb". Cf. samba, macumba.
Another possibility is the Tupi-Guarani word cumbi "murmuring, noise".
Cumbia was also a kind of fine woolen garment produced for the Inca.
In 2006, Colombian musician and musicologist Guillermo Carbo Ronderos said that the etymology of the word cumbia is "still controversial" and that "seems to derive from the Bantu word cumbé".
Music and heritage Sociologist Adolfo Gonzalez Henriquez, in his work "La música del Caribe colombiano durante la guerra de independencia y comienzos de la República" (Music of the Colombian Caribbean during the war of independence and the beginning of the Republic), includes a text of Admiral José Prudencio Padilla which records cumbiambas and indigenous gaitas during the festival of John the Baptist in the neighboring town of Arjona, a few days before the naval battle that took place in the Bahía de las Ánimas of Cartagena between the last Spanish resistance and the republican army, military confrontation that sealed the independence of Colombia:
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The musician and pedagogue Luis Antonio Escobar, in the chapter "La mezcla de indio y negro" (The mixture of Indian and black) of his book "Música en Cartagena de Indias" (Music in Cartagena de Indias) takes the description of Indian dance who witnessed the navy lieutenant Swedish Carl August Gosselman in Santa Marta, and recorded in his work "Viaje por Colombia: 1825 y 1826" (Journey through Colombia: 1825 and 1826) as proof that at least in the second decade of the nineteenth century the gaita ensemble existed already in Santa Marta, the same that appears in Cartagena and other coastal cities with black musical elements that resulted in cumbia:
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In the description of the writer José María Samper during his trip down the Magdalena River in 1879, the constituent elements of dance and music on the Magdalena River, instruments and elements of dance cumbia are identified:
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In his work Lecturas locales (Local Readings) (1953), the barranquillero historian Miguel Goenaga barranquillero describes the cumbia and its cumbiamba circles in Barranquilla around 1888:
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Instruments The original instruments used for the Cumbia were groups of “gaitas and the ones of flauta de millo”. There are also many drums and other wind-like instruments that were used to create this music in the old days. To fill in the background of the music nowadays the musicians use “electric bass, trumpets, congas, and the accordion” as well as other instruments native to the region. This is an important aspect of Cumbia because it helps understand why the Indigenous and Afro-Colombians are both inventors of Cumbia. These instruments are also a big part of the Cumbia as they are what originally built the rhythm and styling pattern of the traditional music.
Origin
The origin of cumbia has been the subject of argument between those who attribute an indigenous ethno-musical origin, geographically located in the Depresión Momposina Province and those who argue the thesis of origin black African in Cartagena or even in Africa itself. The first, represented by personalities like the composer José Barros, writers like Jocé G. Daniels, sociologists like Orlando Fals Borda and historians as Gnecco Rangel Pava, and the latter by the folklorist Delia Zapata Olivella.
In 1998, in his article "La cumbia, emperadora del Pocabuy" (La cumbia, Empress of Pocabuy) the writer Jocé G. Daniels theorizes that the cumbia was "el aliciente espiritual de los indios" (the spiritual attraction of the Indians) to associate the flutes used in the celebrations of the Chimilas, pocigueycas and pocabuyes in the territories of the current populations of Guamal, Ciénaga and El Banco, with the primitive cumbia gaita, based on the report sent by the perpetual governor Lope de Orozco to the king in 1580, about the Province of Santa Marta, which recounts that "los yndios i yndias veben y asen fiestas con una caña a manera de flauta que se meten en la boca para tañer y producen una mucica como mui trayda del infierno" (The Indians drink and party with a cane that is used as a flute, which they put in their mouths to be played and that produces a music that seems to come from the very hell) (sic).
The banqueño songwriter Antonio Garcia presented in 1997 the following theory about the birth of cumbia: "Las tribus dedicadas a la pesca y la agricultura, en sus rituales fúnebres, especialmente cuando moría algún miembro de la alta jerarquía de la tribu, todos los miembros se reunían al caer la noche alrededor de una fogata, en el centro del círculo se colocaba a una mujer embarazada que era símbolo de la nueva vida, quien iniciaba una danza con el ritmo suave y melancólico de la flauta de millo, esta ceremonia se prolongaba por varias horas y terminaba por sumir en el más grande éxtasis a todos los que estaban allí reunidos y así nació la cumbia" (The tribes engaged in fishing and agriculture, in their funeral rituals, especially when someone in the hierarchy of the tribe died, gathered all members at nightfall around a campfire in the center of the circle stood a pregnant woman who was a symbol of new life, who started a dance with the soft and melancholic rhythm from flute of millo, this ceremony was prolonged for several hours and ended up plunging into the greatest ecstasy to all who were gathered there and cumbia was born). At the same meeting, José Barros said, product of the oral tradition received from the Indians: "The cumbia was born in funeral ceremonies that Chimillas Indians celebrated in the country of Pocabuy when one of its leaders died" (La cumbia nació en las ceremonias fúnebres que los indios Chimillas celebraban en el país de Pocabuy cuando moría uno de sus jerarcas). Barros also holds in relation to dance: "The idea of dancing in a circular motion has to do with the custom of the Chimilas Indians who danced around the coffin of one of their leaders, what they did counter-clockwise, what meant one-way trip). Daniels adds that the musical airs related to the origin of the cumbia "had their peak between Chymilas, Pocigueycas (Ponqueycas) and Pocabuyes, i.e., in the actual populations of Guamal, Cienaga and El Banco. Cumbia reached its development with the elements provided by Bemba colorá blacks and whites, cunning and canny.".
To researchers of indigenous cultures, the ethno-musical mixture that gives rise to the cumbia occurs during the Colony in the native country of Pocabuy (current populations of El Banco, Guamal, Menchiquejo and San Sebastian in the Magdalena, Chiriguaná and Tamalameque in the Cesar and Mompox, Chilloa, Chimi and Guataca in Bolívar Department) located in the current Caribbean region of Colombia, in the upper valley of Magdalena region the Mompox Depression (including the cultures of La Sabana (Sucre), La Sabana and the Sinú River, north to Pincoya), product of the musical and cultural fusion of Indigenous, Afro-Colombian slaves and, on a lesser extent, of Spaniards, as referred by it historians Orlando Fals Borda in his book Mompox y Loba, and Gnecco Rangel Pava in his books El País de Pocabuy and Aires Guamalenses. The Pocabuy are mentioned in several recordings, although the most famous mention corresponds to the chorus of the song "Cumbia de la paz" (Cumbia of peace) recorded by "Chico" Cervantes:
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Fals Borda notes:
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For the writer Jocé G. Daniels, is "ironic" that people have "tried to foist a Kumbé Bantú origin to cumbia." Researchers question that if the cumbia came from African rhythms, in other parts of America where blacks came from all over Africa as slaves, as the United States, there should be cumbia, or at least something similar. J. Barros says, "cumbia does not have a single hint of Africa. That's easy to check: the United States, which received so many thousands of black Africans does not have anything like cumbia in its folkloric manifestations. The same happens with the Antillean countries. I wonder why if the cumbia is African and entered through La Boquilla, like Manuel and Delia Zapata Olivella Dsay, in Puerto Tejada, for example, where there are also black people, and throughout the Pacific, cumbia is not a rhythm or appears in compositions ... I, who have been in contact with Pocabuyanos Indians since I was eight, who have had the opportunity since I was a child to interact with indigenous wome of 80 to 90 years telling her ritual, the cumbia ritual, I can certify the above, that the cumbia appeared every time the cacique died and they danced around the dead."
In turn, the Africanists place the emergence of the cumbia to contact the black slaves with Indians in ports like Cartagena, Ciénaga, Santa Marta and Riohacha, mainly in the first, during the celebrations of the Virgen de la Candelaria. The Afro-Colombianists dispute the origin of cumbia, and the place it Cartagena.
Some authors assume that the black element in cumbia comes from cumbé, a bantu rhythm and dance from Bioko island Bioko, Equatorial Guinea.