In 1950 a new musical genre appeared in Spain that originated in Barcelona’s neighbourhoods particularly in Gràcia and Raval. The genre was developed by the Romani community who combined gypsy music, Rock’N’Roll, pop and Rumba Flamenca.
While this musical style has often been wrongly classified as Flamenco, Rock’N’Roll or pop it is a separate musical genre with its own identity that is often seen as one of Catalonia’s most significant cultural achievements of the 20th century. Many Romani have long fought for this musical style to be given the recognition it deserves against the commonplace misclassification of this style as a “Flamenco”. It would be an affront to proponents of this style that has finally achieved international recognition to call it Catalan Rock’N’Roll, Catalan Pop or Catalan Flamenco and all of these titles would be equally wrong in that they would focus on just one musical aspect that influenced this genre rather than recognising it as a new style in its own right. Instead, surprisingly, the term “Rumba” Catalana has become the title of this genre although the terms Rumba Gitana, Rumba Española or simply Rumba have also been used to describe it. All of these terms categorise it as a derivative of Rumba which is factually further from the truth than classifying it as Flamenco or Rock’N’Roll given that the influence of Rumba on this style is tangential at best.
The reason for this deplorable title is that it is seen as closely connected to Rumba Flamenca (another misnomer that should not be referred to as Rumba as discussed in the previous post) but it is not a Flamenco itself. To differentiate the genre from the genre that influenced it “Rumba Flamenca” while illustrating that these genres are connected, the term Flamenca was dropped but the term Rumba remained. The focus was on making sure that people would not confuse different types of Western musical genres but borrowing the title of an Afro-Cuban genre to describe something entirely different was once again not seen as problematic or controversial.
This dilution of the word Rumba meant that with the popularity of Rumba Catalana the word Rumba became more and more associated with musical styles that had next to nothing in common with the original Rumba complex. Particularly in Spain the word Rumba has been used since the end of the 20th century to talk about any derivative of Catalan Rumba such as styles including hip-hop, funk, soul and tecno elements. New titles such as “Rumba Pop”, Tecno-Rumba”, etc. were coined to further differentiate these styles from Rumba Catalana and Rumba Flamenca making the definition of “Rumba” in the Western world increasingly less clear.
