My new Cumbia Dynamite mix is online now at www.mixcrate.com. The one I did earlier this year is here: Cinco de Mayo Cumbia mix. Cumbia has been an obsession of mine in 2010. I am mostly interested in the digital cumbia that is coming from all corners of the world but the roots cumbia I have been listening to throughout the year has shown me why the new cumbia is so damn good. New schoolers are using melodies that are sometimes 50 years old or more to create fresh tracks based on the solid roots of cumbia.
Cumbia started in the northern coast of South America, what is now Colombia and Panama, mainly in or around Cartagena during the period of Spanish colonization. Spain used its ports to import African slaves, who tried to preserve their musical traditions and also turned the drumming and dances into a courtship ritual. Cumbia was mainly performed with just drums and claves. It is thought that it was played for a courtship dance practiced among the African slave population and was later mixed with European instruments and musical characteristics. The main "shuffle" rhythm you hear in cumbia is arguably hundreds of years old or more. It has been traced to the Cumbe rhythm in Guinean music and also traced to the rhythm of music played by the Yoruba (more specifically, the rhythm is associated with the would have been creationist god Obatala of the Yoruba culture), and in other musical traditions across West Africa.
I love this music. I love the history of this music. There is mad change in its' history yet it has retained much of its beauty & roots through centuries of diaspora and brutality. In fact, it is often the case that art is made more beautiful through things like diaspora, brutality and general struggle. I think this is especially true for Cumbia. In modern times it has African, South American, Central American, North American and European influences mixing with the technology of the day to create a music that is unlike any other. Viva La Cumbia!
