Syncretic origins Enslaved Africans were first brought to Cuba in the 16th century by the early Spanish settlers. Due to the significance of sugar as an export during the late 18th and early 19th century, even greater numbers of people from Africa were enslaved, brought to Cuba, and forced to work on the sugar plantations. Where large populations of enslaved Africans lived, African religion, dance, and drumming were clandestinely preserved through the generations. Cultural retention among the Bantu, Yoruba, Fon (Arará), and Efik (Abakuá) had the most significant impact in western Cuba, where rumba was born. The consistent interaction of Africans and Europeans on the island brought about what today is known as
Afro-Cuban culture. This is a process known as
transculturation, an idea that Cuban scholar
Fernando Ortiz brought to the forefront in cultural studies like
Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Cuban transculturation melds Spanish culture with African cultures, as with the seamless merging found in rumba. Ortiz saw transculturation as a positive social force: "consecrating the need for mutual understanding on an objective grounding of truth to move toward achieving the definitive integrity of the nation." Most ethnomusicologists agree that the roots of rumba can be found in the
solares of Havana and Matanzas during the 1880s. The
solares, also known as
cuarterías, were large houses in the poor dock neighborhoods of Havana and Matanzas. Many of the important figures in the history of rumba, from
Malanga to
Mongo Santamaría were raised in
solares. Slavery was abolished in 1886 in Cuba and first-generation of free black citizens were often called
negros de nación, a term commonly found in the lyrics of rumba songs. They comprised as many as 150 men and women who sang in time with European harmonies and instruments. Songs began with a female solo singer followed by call-and-response choral singing. As many as 60
coros de clave might have existed by 1902, some of which denied any African influence on their music. Examples of popular
coros de clave include El Arpa de Oro and La Juventud. From the
coros the clave evolved the
coros de guaguancó, which comprised mostly men, had a time, and incorporated drums. These ensembles gave rise to the first authentic rumba groups, and with them several types of rumba emerged, including the now popular guaguancó and yambú. However, others have been lost to time or are extremely rare today, such as the
tahona, papalote, and the jiribilla and resedá. Even after slavery was abolished in Cuba, there still remained social and racial inequality, which Afro-Cubans dealt with by using rumba's music and dancing as an outlet of frustration. Because Afro-Cubans had fewer economic opportunities and the majority lived in poverty, the style of dance and music did not gain national popularity and recognition until the 1950s, and especially after the effects of the 1959
Cuban Revolution, which institutionalized it. The first commercial studio recordings of Cuban rumba were made in 1947 in New York by
Carlos Vidal Bolado and
Chano Pozo for SMC Pro-Arte, and in 1948 in Havana by Filiberto Sánchez for
Panart. The first commercial ensemble recordings of rumba were made in the mid 1950s by
Alberto Zayas and his Conjunto Afrocubano Lulú Yonkori, yielding the 1956 hit "El vive bien". The success of this song prompted the promotion of another rumba group,
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, which became extremely popular. Together with Los Muñequitos,
Los Papines were the first band to popularize rumba in Cuba and abroad. Their very stylized version of the genre has been considered a "unique" and "innovative" approach.
Post-revolutionary institutionalization After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, there were many efforts by the government to institutionalize rumba, which has resulted in two different types of performances. The first was the more traditional rumba performed in a backyard with a group of friends and family without any type of governmental involvement. The second was a style dedicated to tourists while performed in a theater setting. Two institutions that promoted rumba as part of Cuban culture –thus creating the tourist performance– are the Ministry of Culture and the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba ('Cuban Nacional Folkloric Company'). As Folklórico Nacional became more prevalent in the promotion of rumba, the dance "shifted from its original locus, street corners, where it often shared attention with parallel activities of traffic, business, and socializing, to its secondary quarters, the professional stage, to another home, the theatrical patio." Although Folklórico Nacional aided in the tourist promotion of rumba, the Ministry of Culture helped successfully and safely organize rumba in the streets. In early post-revolutionary times, spontaneous rumba might have been considered problematic due to its attraction of large groups at unpredictable and spontaneous times, which caused traffic congestion in certain areas and was linked with fights and drinking. The post-revolutionary government aimed to control this "by organizing where rumba could take place agreeable and successfully, the government, through the Ministry of Culture, moved to structurally safeguard one of its major dance/music complexes and incorporate it and Cuban artists nearer the core of official Cuban culture." This change in administering rumba not only helped organize the dances but also helped it move away from the negative connotation of being a disruptive past time event. Although this organization helped the style of rumba develop as an aspect of national culture, it also had some negative effects. For example, one of the main differences between pre- and post-revolutionary is that after the revolution rumba became more structured and less spontaneous. For instance, musicians dancers and singers gathered together to become inspired through rumba. In other words, rumba was a form of the moment where spontaneity was essentially the sole objective. However, post-revolutionary Cuba "led to manipulation of rumba form. It condensed the time of a rumba event to fit theater time and audience concentration tie. It also crystallized specific visual images through... [a] framed and packaged... dance form on stages and special performance patios." Yvonne Daniel states: “Folklórico Nacional dancers . . . must execute each dance as a separate historical entity in order to guard and protect the established representations of Cuban folkloric traditions . . . by virtue of their membership in the national company, the license to elaborate or create stylization . . . is not available to them.” As official caretakers of the national folkloric treasure, the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional has successfully preserved the sound of the mid-twentieth century Havana-style rumba. True traditional or folkloric rumba is not as stylized as the theatrical presentations performed by professional rumba groups; rather, "[i]t is more of an atmosphere than a genre. It goes without saying that in Cuba there is not one rumba, but many rumbas." Despite the structure enforced in rumba through the Folklórico Nacional and the Ministry of Culture, traditional forms of rumba danced at informal social gatherings remain pervasive.
Modernization In the 1980s,
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas greatly expanded the melodic parameters of the drums, inspiring a wave of creativity that ultimately led to the modernization of rumba drumming. Freed from the confines of the traditional drum melodies, rumba became more an aesthetic, rather than a specific combination of individual parts. The most significant innovation of the late 1980s was the rumba known as
guarapachangueo, created by Los Chinitos of Havana, and
batá-rumba, created by AfroCuba de Matanzas. Batá-rumba initially was just a matter of combining guaguancó and chachalokuafún, but it has since expanded to include a variety of batá rhythms. A review of the 2008 CD by Pedro Martínez and Román Díaz,
The Routes of Rumba, describes
guarapachangueo as follows: Guarapachangueo, invented by the group Los Chinitos in Havana in the 1970s, is based on "the interplay of beats and rests", and is highly conversational (Jottar, 2008). Far from the standardized regularity of the drum rhythms of recordings such as
Alberto Zayas's "El vive bien", guarapachangueo often sounds slightly random or unorganized to the untrained ear, yet presents a plethora of percussive synchronicities for those who understand the
clave. Using both
cajones (wooden boxes) and
tumbadoras (
congas), Martinez and Diaz reflect the tendencies of their generation of rumberos in combining these instruments, which widens the sonic plane to include more bass and treble sounds. In their video about the history of guarapachangueo, Los Chinitos say that initially the word "guarapachangueo" was used by their colleague musician in a disparaging way: "What kind of guarapachangueo are you playing?".
Pancho Quinto and his group
Yoruba Andabo also played a vital role in the development of the genre. The word derives from "guarapachanga", itself a
portmanteau of "
guarapo" and "
pachanga" coined by composer Juan Rivera Prevot in 1961.
Legacy and influence Rumba is considered "the quintessential genre of Cuban secular music and dance". For many Cubans, rumba represents "a whole way of life", and professional
rumberos have called it "a national sport, as important as baseball". The genre has permeated not only the culture of Cuba but also that of the whole of Latin America, including the United States, through its influence on genres such as
ballroom rumba ("rhumba"),
Afro-Cuban jazz and
salsa. Even though rumba is technically complicated and usually performed by a certain social class and one "racial group", Cubans consider it one of the most important facets of their cultural identity. In fact, it is acknowledged as intimately and fundamentally "Cuban" by most Cubans because it rose from Cuban social dance. After its institutionalization following the Revolution, rumba has adopted a position as a symbol of what Cuba stands for and of how Cubans want the international community to envision their country and its culture and society: vibrant, full of joy and authentic.
Influence on other Afro-Cuban traditions Rumba has influenced both the transplanted African drumming traditions and the popular dance music created on the island. In 1950, Fernando Ortíz observed the influence of rumba upon ceremonial
batá drumming: "“The drummers are alarmed at the disorder that is spreading in the temples regarding the liturgical
toques ['batá rhythms']. The people wish to have fun and ask for
arrumbados, which are toques similar to rumbas and are not orthodox according to rites; the drummers who do not gratify the faithful, who are the ones that pay, are not called to play and if they do not play, they do not collect.” The batá rhythms chachalokuafun and ñongo in particular have absorbed rumba aesthetics. Michael Spiro states: “When I hear ñongo played by young drummers today, I hear rumba." In chachalokuafun the high-pitched okónkolo drum, usually the most basic and repetitive batá, improvises independently of the conversations carried on between the other two drums (iyá and itótele), in a manner suggestive of rumba. The contemporary style of lead drum accompaniment for the
chekeré ensemble known as agbe or guiro, is played on the high-pitched quinto, instead of the lower-pitched tumba as was done in earlier times. The part has evolved away from the bembé caja (lead drum) vocabulary towards quinto-like phrases. Rumba has had a notable influence on cajón pa’ los muertos ceremonies. In a rare turn of events, the secular yambú was adopted into this Afro-Cuban religion.
Influence on contemporary music Many of the rhythmic innovations in Cuban popular music, from the early twentieth century, until present, have been a matter of incorporating rumba elements into the
son-based template. For example, bongos incorporating quinto phrases are heard on 1920s recordings of son. Several of the timbales cowbell parts introduced during the
mambo era of the 1940s are Havana-style guaguancó guagua patterns:
Descargas (mostly instrumental jams sessions) where jazz-influenced improvisation was developed, were first known as
rumbitas in the early 1940s. The musicians improvised with a rumba sensibility. By the 1950s the rhythmic vocabulary of the rumba quinto was the source of a great deal of rhythmically dynamic phrases and passages heard in Cuban popular music and Latin jazz. Even with today’s flashy percussion solos, where snare rudiments and other highly developed techniques are used, analysis of the prevailing accents will often reveal an underlying quinto structure. In the late 1970s guaguancó was incorporated into Cuban popular music in the style known as
songo. Songo congas play a hybrid of the salidor and quinto, while the timbales or drum kit play an embellishment of the Matanzas-style guagua. Contemporary
timba musicians cite rumba as a primary source of inspiration in composing and arranging. Timba composer Alain Pérez states: "In order to get this spontaneous and natural feel, you should know la rumba . . . all the percussion, quinto improvising." ==Styles==