As discussed in this series so far the dance types people understand under the term
Rumba are predominantly modern dance inventions which are hardly related to the
original dance types that have been danced in Cuba for over a century and coined the
term Rumba. I cannot help but feel a sense of regret when time and time again I meet
people who are either completely unaware that Rumba has anything to do with Cuba
or almost worse, describe the original forms as “Cuban Rumba” and the version they
know as “Real Rumba” as if to say that the Cubans modified the international accepted dance form into some obscure version of their own when it is exactly the
opposite thing that has happened.
Instead of the term Rumba being internationally accepted as a classification for
dances developed in Cuba such as Guaguancó, it unfortunately means different dances
to different people and for the few people who actually do want to describe the Cuban
dance forms outside of Cuba there is very little they can do to make themselves
understood than using some qualifier such as “Cuban Rumba”, “Authentic Rumba”,
“Afrocuban Rumba”, “Original Rumba” “Folkloric Rumba” etc. rather than the new
dance forms being described as “French Rumba”, “English Rumba” etc.
This is absurd when we consider the fact that Cuba developed a number of dance
forms under this name decades before any other dance form was described by this
title. Imagine you study a dance form under the title Rumba for many years and all of
a sudden someone makes up a new completely unrelated dance borrowing this title
and telling you that the dance you specialised in which was called Rumba yesterday is
now called “Cuban Rumba”. It seems ridiculous but this is exactly what happened and
while some people may view this as a pointless discussion on semantics it is in fact a
mechanism by which Cuba which has influenced popular dance forms and music
around the world more than any other country is denied any of the credit it deserves.
Since there is so much confusion around this term, even among my own students, I
feel compelled to analyse some of the international dances that are referred to as
“Rumba” and how they relate to Cuba before describing the Rumba complex of
Afrocuban dances such as Yambú, Guaguancó and Columbia which is what this blog
series is really supposed to be about. What I will not do however, is dilute these
original dances with qualifiers such as “Cuban”, “Authentic” etc. but rather denote
any modern version of Rumba with a qualifier such as “Ballroom Rumba”, “Square
Rumba”, “Catalan Rumba” etc. to distinguish it from dances such as Yambú,
Guaguancó and Columbia. In this series as well as any future articles in this blog
when I use the word Rumba without any qualifier I will refer to the Rumba complex
developed in Cuba and nothing else which is maybe confusing to some Western
readers but in line with the historical development of the various dance forms and
certainly the way Cubans themselves would look at the collection of dances described
by this term. I.e. no one in Cuba would have the idea to refer to a dance such as
Columbia by the title “Cuban Rumba” which in Cuba is just called Rumba and I will
adapt the same terminology in any of the blog posts I write on the subject.
