Cumbia (Colombia)

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Cumbia
Stylistic origins	Amerindian music European music African music
Cultural origins	Caribbean region of Colombia
Typical instruments	Caña de millo kuisi tambor alegre tambor llamador tambora caja vallenata guache maracas Güiro Güira Cabasa diatonic button accordion guacharaca clarinet
Subgenres
Cumbia sonidera cumbia villera cumbia pegassera New Chilean cumbia
Fusion genres
Merecumbé tecnocumbia cumbia rap danzon cumbia danza cumbia
Regional scenes
Argentine cumbia Bolivian cumbia Colombian cumbia Costa Rican cumbia Chilean cumbia Ecuadorian cumbia Guatemalan cumbia Honduran cumbia Mexican cumbia Nicaraguan cumbia Panamanian cumbia Paraguayan cumbia Peruvian cumbia Salvadorian cumbia Venezuelan cumbia

Cumbia (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkumbja]) is a folkloric genre and dance from Colombia.^[1][2][3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5][6] During the dance, the partners don't 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a sombrero vueltiao that he tries to put on the woman's head as a representation of amorous conquest.^[7] This dance is originally made to depict the battle that the “black man had to fight to conquer an indigenous woman”.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.^[8]

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 a 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”. ^[9]

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.