Understanding cumbia

A dance born of three worlds

Cumbia is the name for popular rhythms and dances of Latin America, born in colonial times from the encounter between Indigenous peoples, Europeans and Africans. Colombian cumbia is the origin of all the others: in the twentieth century, it spread out of Colombia and across the whole of Latin America.

Its traditional instruments are three drums, the tambora, the tambor alegre and the llamador, and flutes, the gaitas and the flauta de millo. It is written in two beats (2/2 or 2/4); my lesson is written in four. On the piano, there are no drums or flutes: the left hand marks the beats, the right hand plays between them, and the melody hides in its chords.

On the beat, off the beat

The whole sway comes from two alternating gestures. The left hand plays on every beat, in quarter notes, the root then the fifth of the chord: A and E under Am (the E lower than the A), E and B under E7, D and A under Dm. The right hand plays on every "and", the off-beats: a short three-note chord between two bass notes. The hands never play together, and between them they fill every eighth note of the bar.

In these chords, the bottom two notes stay put as long as the chord does not change (E and A over Am, D and G-sharp over E7, D and F over Dm); it is the top note that moves. When it climbs to the high E or F, the low D drops out, so the chord stays within an octave. Put end to end, those top notes make the melody: there is no separate tune, it is carried by the chords, off the beat.

The G-sharp of E7 is not in the map's scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G): it is the third of E7, which makes the chord major and pulls it towards A. In the sections, the map writes the degrees whose chord is minor in lower case (i, iv): Am and Dm.

What the lesson plays

• A (bars 1 to 4): Am, two bars of E7, then Am. The melody circles around C, drops to B during E7 and comes back to C: E7 returning to Am is a perfect cadence.
• A (bars 5 to 8): the same phrase, note for note.
• B (bars 9 to 12): the bridge starts on Dm, the iv, and the melody climbs to high F, the highest note in the piece; then Am, E7 and Am bring it back, through the same cadence.
• A (bars 13 to 16): the opening phrase.
• The coda (bar 17): a held Am chord, C, E, A above an A in the bass. For the only time in the piece, the right hand plays on the beat: this is the end.

How to approach it

My plan takes you through it in 7 days. This lesson does not ask for speed: it asks for two hands that take turns without ever treading on each other's toes.

1. The left hand alone. One quarter note per beat, root then fifth. All its notes fit between low D and low B: the hand hardly moves.
2. The off-beats alone. Count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and", and play the bottom two notes of each chord in the right hand, on the "ands" only.
3. Add the top note. Keep your thumb and index finger on the bottom two notes, and let the upper fingers sing the melody.
4. Hands together, slowly. Say "boom-chick": the bass on the beat, the chord on the "and". Do not stop between phrases: the bass never does.
5. The passages I point out (bars 4–5, 8–9 and 10) bring no new rhythm: they are the joins between two phrases and the way into the bridge, then bar 10, where the top note jumps from C to E on every off-beat.