Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba - book
Yvonne Daniel | 1995 | Indiana University Press | English
The definitive academic study of rumba as a living practice in Cuba â essential reading for any dancer who wants to understand the Afro-Cuban movement vocabulary that underlies timba"> timba, casino, and all Cuban popular dance.
What It Covers
Yvonne Daniel is both a scholar and a dancer who lived and studied in Cuba extensively. Her book documents rumba â guaguancĂł, columbia, and yambĂș â not as a historical artifact but as a living social practice in the solares (tenement courtyards) and community gatherings of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas.
She covers:
- The three rumba styles in depth: their movement vocabulary, musical structure, and social meanings
- The vacunao and botao (the pursuit-and-evasion dynamic of guaguancĂł) as a social and cultural phenomenon, not just a dance step
- The relationship between rumba and Afro-Cuban religious traditions (SanterĂa, AbakuĂĄ)
- How rumba functions as cultural memory â a way of preserving African identity through the body
- The social and political context of rumba in revolutionary Cuba
Why Dancers Should Read It
Timba dance â particularly despelote and the Afro-Cuban body vocabulary â is rumba translated into the popular dance context. The isolation work, the grounding, the improvisational call-and-response with the percussion, the social play between dancers: all of it has its roots in rumba.
Reading Daniel's book gives you the deep background for movements you may already be learning. Understanding why the body moves the way it does in Cuban dance â what historical and cultural forces shaped it â changes how you dance. You stop executing technique and start expressing something real.
About the Author
Yvonne Daniel is a professor of dance and Afro-American studies. Her research involved years of fieldwork in Cuba, studying with master rumba dancers and musicians. The book is academic but written accessibly â readable by any motivated dancer, not just scholars.
DanzĂłn was the first national dance of Cuba â the form that unified the island's popular music identity in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the ancestor of mambo"> mambo, cha-cha-chĂĄ, and ultimately timba"> timba.
Lees meer >Timba is the music this site is dedicated to exploring. It emerged as a distinct genre in the late 1980s and crystallized in the early 1990s â born in a moment of social crisis, built on the full accumulated history of Cuban music, and still evolving today.
Lees meer >Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms â born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms â born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms â born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms â born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms â born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Casino is the Cuban partner dance born in the social clubs (casinos deportivos) of Havana in the 1950s. It is what Cubans call their own social dance â distinct from, and older than, what the rest of the world calls "salsa."
Lees meer >Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the birthplace of some of the world's most influential music and dance traditions. African, Spanish, and French cultural streams collided here over centuries of colonial history, producing an extraordinary creative culture that exported itself across the globe.
Lees meer >The following dances have their origin in Matanzas:
- Rumba
- YambĂș
- GuaguancĂł
- DanzĂłn
- AbakuĂĄ
-
Arara
Lees meer >
Despelote is the most explosive individual dance style in timba"> timba â a full-body release of energy that happens during the high-intensity bomba sections of a timba"> timba song.
Lees meer >AbakuĂĄ is a male secret society that originated in Cuba in the early 1800s, specifically in Regla, Havana, in 1836.
It was created by enslaved and free Afro-Cubans who brought traditions from the Ekpe societies of the Efik, Ibibio, and Ejagham peoples in the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon.
Lees meer >Cuban music is built on percussion. The extraordinary density and variety of Cuban rhythmic culture reflects the meeting of West and Central African drumming traditions with Spanish, Haitian, and creole musical practices over four centuries. The instruments below form the core percussive vocabulary heard across Son, Rumba, timba"> Timba, DanzĂłn, and their descendants.
Lees meer >A Cuban popular dance music genre that emerged in the 1980sâ90s
- emerged in the 1980sâ90s
- influenced by songo, rumba, funk, blues, jazz, pop, rock and Afro-Cuban rhythms.
- Known for complex rhythm shifts, aggressive bass lines, and high energy that push dancers to improvise.
Lees meer >