Cumbia

Cumbia refers to a number of musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America, generally involving musical and cultural elements from American Indigenous peoples, African slaves during colonial times, and Europeans.[1] It is said to have come from funeral traditions in the Afro-Colombian community.

Cumbia traditionally uses three drums: tambora, tambor alegre, and lamador; three flutes: gaita hembra, gaito macho, and flauta de millo; and has a ²
₂ or ²
₄ meter.[2] The sound of cumbia can be characterized as having a simple "chucu-chucu-chu" created by the guacharaca.[3] The genre frequently incorporates brass instruments and piano. In order to properly understand the interlocking relationship between cumbia's roots and its Pan-American (and then global) routes, Colombia's geocultural complexities must first be taken into account.

Examples of cumbia include:

• Colombian cumbia, is a musical rhythm and traditional folk dance from Colombia.[4] It has elements of three different cultures, American Indigenous, African, and Spanish, being the result of the long and intense meeting of these cultures during the Conquest and the Colony.[5] The Colombian cumbia is the origin of all the other variations, including the tradition of dancing it with candles in the dancers' hands.
• Panamanian cumbia, Panamanian folk dance and musical genre, developed by enslaved people of African descent during colonial times and later syncretized with American Indigenous and European cultural elements.