Historic Elements

Rumba in Latin America is understood as a social gathering or celebration. In Cuba, it is a performance based culture, the popular expression of the most dispossessed Afro-descendant populations by which they express their feelings and sociopolitical opinions from the margins—from the courtyards (solares) and the ports areas of Havana and Matanzas. Rumba serves then as a social chronicle. But Rumba is also historically informed genre; it is a synthesis, it is the result of the forced encounter between members of different African ethnic groups (Yoruba, Congolese, Bantú, Carabalí), with those who traveled with the Spanish slavery trade, such as gypsies, Spaniards and negros curros (free Afro-Spanish) during Spanish colonialism. However, Rumba is generally understood as a post-colonial (late 1800s) cultural phenomenon that evolved among stevedore workers during their free time within Havana and Matanza’s ports or in the rural areas surrounding sugar industry. These laborers’ social gatherings resulted in the musical and kinesthetic synthesis of their traditions and new social relations. (Argeliers Leon 1984, 140) Thus, Rumba maintains a historico-cultural conversation between the Congolese in the Rumba Columbia rhythms, the Yoruba in the pelvic gestures of the vacunao, and the Abakuá through the guaguancó rhythms.

Rumba has also been adopted and adapted by Latino and Afro-Latino populations in the United States. For instance, the Nuyorrican community has cultivated the form by practicing traditional Rumba in corner bodegas and public parks in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn since the late 1960s. Contemporary Rumba comprises a transnational aural community united by the rhythm of Rumba’s clave, a polyrhythm that serves as Rumba’s spinal chord to the singer, percussionists and dancers. Indeed, Rumba is a lived example of transculturation, it is the result of the collapse of past and present socio-cultural interactions articulated via performance -gestures, music, sound, and orality.

The Abakuá social and rhythmic presence is fundamental in Rumba. Many Cuban rumberos are admittedly members of the various all-male Abakuá lodges or Juegos. The Abakuá brotherhoods, also known as potencias, are mutual-aid associations with both social and religious functions. Their religious practice is in direct relationship to nature, but their function as a cabildo de nación is what constituted them as socio-cultural institutions. In the early 19th century, the Abakuá were known to control the port zones of Havana, Matanzas and Cárdenas, organizing the white and black stevedores against exploitation. It was in this context that Rumba thrived.

Just as rumba happens in the marginal living compounds and the port culture, it also happens during the massive movements of people, in spaces dictated by chance. It is said that the name Rumba comes from the name given to sex workers “mujeres de rumbo.” Also, Rumba is like traveling through time, where sound and gesture takes us spontaneously to different physical, emotional and historical states. Rumba is a daily anecdote, a slice of history, a result of specific labor conditions, and a response to processes and relations of power and capital. But the Rumba also is where one shows and acquires one’s personality, one’s identity, one becomes in the rumba. In the rumba every one is their own personage, everyone operates by means of their creative expressiveness. As a consequence, everything can occur in a rumba. The rumba has its be-le bele, the drum its mystery and Rumba is the most sublime thing for the soul to entertain … This is why Rumba lives in transit.