cumbia

The tradition & historical record

Cumbia (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkumbja]) is a folkloric genre and dance from Colombia. The cumbia is the most representative dance of the coastal region in Colombia, and is danced in pairs with the couple not touching one another as they display the amorous conquest of a woman by a man. The couple performing cumbia dances in a circle around a group of musicians, and it involves the woman holding lit candle(s) in her right hand that she uses to push the man away while she holds her skirt in her left. During the dance, the partners do not touch each other, and the man dances while holding a sombrero vueltiao that he tries to put on the woman's head as a representation of amorous conquest. This dance is originally made to depict the battle that the “black man had to fight to conquer an indigenous woman”. The story continues and the dance shows that this leads to a new generation and is depicting the history of the coast of Colombia. However Cumbia is much more than just a dance; it is “practica cultural” (cultural practice). Cumbia is an umbrella term, and much like vallenato there are many subcategories. The subcategories are many like music, dance, rhythm, and genre.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Cumbia (Colombia)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

cumbia is music genre and dance from Colombia, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 15 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹