Cumbia (Colombia)

Cumbia is a folkloric genre and dance from Colombia.Cheville, Lila, Festivals and Dances of Panama, Panamá: Litho Impresora Panamá, 1977. 187 p.; 22 cm. Page 128-133

Since the 1940s, commercial or modern Colombian cumbia expanded to the rest of Latin America, after which it became popular throughout the continent, including in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Etymology

Most folklorists and musicologists, such as Narciso Garay, Delia Zapata Olivella, and Guillermo Abadia Morales, assume that cumbia is derived from the Bantu root ''kumbe'' "to dance", or any other of the many Bantu words with "comb" or "kumb". Cf. samba, macumba.

Another possibility is the Tupi-Guarani word ''cumbi'' "murmuring, noise".

Cumbia was also a kind of fine woolen garment produced for the Inca.

In 2006, Colombian musician and musicologist Guillermo Carbo Ronderos said that the etymology of the word ''cumbia'' is "still controversial" and that "seems to derive from the Bantu word ''cumbé''"

Origins

Sociologist Adolfo Gonzalez Henriquez, in his work "La música del Caribe colombiano durante la guerra de independencia y comienzos de la República" (Music of the Colombian Caribbean during the war of independence and the beginning of the Republic), includes a text of Admiral José Prudencio Padilla which records cumbiambas and indigenous gaitas during the festival of John the Baptist in the neighboring town of Arjona, a few days before the naval battle that took place in the Bahía de las Ánimas of Cartagena between the last Spanish resistance and the republican army, military confrontation that sealed the independence of Colombia:

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The musician and pedagogue Luis Antonio Escobar, in the chapter "La mezcla de indio y negro" (The mixture of Indian and black) of his book "Música en Cartagena de Indias" (Music in Cartagena de Indias) takes the description of Indian dance who witnessed the navy lieutenant Swedish Carl August Gosselman in Santa Marta, and recorded in his work "Viaje por Colombia: 1825 y 1826" (Journey through Colombia: 1825 and 1826) as proof that at least in the second decade of the nineteenth century the gaita ensemble existed already in Santa Marta, the same that appears in Cartagena and other coastal cities with black musical elements that resulted in cumbia:

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In the description of the writer José María Samper during his trip down the Magdalena River in 1879, the constituent elements of dance and music on the Magdalena River, instruments and elements of dance cumbia are identified:

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In his work ''Lecturas locales'' (Local Readings) (1953), the barranquillero historian Miguel Goenaga barranquillero describes the cumbia and its cumbiamba circles in Barranquilla around 1888:

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Controversy

The origin of cumbia has been the subject of argument between those who attribute an indigenous ethno-musical origin, geographically located in the Depresión Momposina Province and those who argue the thesis of origin black African in Cartagena or even in Africa itself. The first, represented by personalities like the composer José Barros, writers like Jocé G. Daniels, sociologists like Orlando Fals Borda and historians as Gnecco Rangel Pava, and the latter by the folklorist Delia Zapata Olivella.

In 1998, in his article "La cumbia, emperadora del Pocabuy" (La cumbia, Empress of Pocabuy) the writer Jocé G. Daniels theorizes that the cumbia was "el aliciente espiritual de los indios" (the spiritual attraction of the Indians) to associate the flutes used in the celebrations of the Chimilas, pocigueycas and pocabuyes in the territories of the current populations of Guamal, Ciénaga and El Banco, with the primitive cumbia gaita, based on the report sent by the perpetual governor Lope de Orozco to the king in 1580, about the Province of Santa Marta, which recounts that "los yndios i yndias veben y asen fiestas con una caña a manera de flauta que se meten en la boca para tañer y producen una mucica como mui trayda del infierno" (The Indians drink and party with a cane that is used as a flute, which they put in their mouths to be played and that produces a music that seems to come from the very hell) (sic).

The banqueño songwriter Antonio Garcia presented in 1997 the following theory about the birth of cumbia: "Las tribus dedicadas a la pesca y la agricultura, en sus rituales fúnebres, especialmente cuando moría algún miembro de la alta jerarquía de la tribu, todos los miembros se reunían al caer la noche alrededor de una fogata, en el centro del círculo se colocaba a una mujer embarazada que era símbolo de la nueva vida, quien iniciaba una danza con el ritmo suave y melancólico de la flauta de millo, esta ceremonia se prolongaba por varias horas y terminaba por sumir en el más grande éxtasis a todos los que estaban allí reunidos y así nació la cumbia" (The tribes engaged in fishing and agriculture, in their funeral rituals, especially when someone in the hierarchy of the tribe died, gathered all members at nightfall around a campfire in the center of the circle stood a pregnant woman who was a symbol of new life, who started a dance with the soft and melancholic rhythm from flute of millo, this ceremony was prolonged for several hours and ended up plunging into the greatest ecstasy to all who were gathered there and cumbia was born). At the same meeting, José Barros said, product of the oral tradition received from the Indians: "The cumbia was born in funeral ceremonies that Chimillas Indians celebrated in the country of Pocabuy when one of its leaders died" (La cumbia nació en las ceremonias fúnebres que los indios Chimillas celebraban en el país de Pocabuy cuando moría uno de sus jerarcas). Barros also holds in relation to dance: "The idea of dancing in a circular motion has to do with the custom of the Chimilas Indians who danced around the coffin of one of their leaders, what they did counter-clockwise, what meant one-way trip). Daniels adds that the musical airs related to the origin of the cumbia "had their peak between Chymilas, Pocigueycas (Ponqueycas) and Pocabuyes, i.e., in the actual populations of Guamal, Cienaga and El Banco. Cumbia reached its development with the elements provided by Bemba colorá blacks and whites, cunning and canny.".

To researchers of indigenous cultures, the ethno-musical mixture that gives rise to the cumbia occurs during the Colony in the native country of Pocabuy (current populations of El Banco, Guamal, Menchiquejo and San Sebastian in the Magdalena, Chiriguaná and Tamalameque in the Cesar and Mompox, Chilloa, Chimi and Guataca in Bolívar Department) located in the current Caribbean region of Colombia