Mexican Cumbia Movie

[Thora Buckner]

Thecumbia has its origins in Colombia going back at least as far as the early 1800s, with elements from indigenous and black music traditions. In the 1940s, Colombian singer Luis Carlos Meyer Castandet emigrated to Mexico, where he worked with Mexican orchestra director Rafael de Paz. In the 1950s, he recorded what many believe to be the first cumbia recorded outside of Colombia, "La Cumbia Cienaguera". He recorded other hits like "La historia". Thus Cumbia gained popularity in Mexico.

In the 1970s Aniceto Molina also emigrated to Mexico, where he joined the group from Guerrero, La Luz Roja de San Marcos, and recorded many popular tropical cumbia songs like "El Gallo Mojado", "El Peluquero", and "La Mariscada". In the 1970s, Rigo Tovar enjoyed success with his fusion of cumbia music with ballads and rock.

Mexican cumbia is similar to other adaptations of Colombian music[1] such as Salvadorian cumbia, Peruvian cumbia or Argentinian cumbia, among others. It is not a unification of a single genre, but a mix of styles that are very diverse and wide ranging, from province to province, from era to era. They have styles that once they are assimilated by the public and the musicians of Colombian cumbia, giving birth to new subgenres, such as northern cumbia, southern cumbia, mariachi cumbia or Sonidera cumbia. These national variations are a fusion of adapted Colombian folk stories with the national styles like northern music, mariachi, band music, romantic music, huapango, Son Huasteco, and also with ancient and modern rhythms from abroad like Cuban Son, salsa, merengue, reggae, and ska among the Afro-Caribbean rhythms, as well as the Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Vals and Peruvian folk styles, in addition to later influences from rock & roll, hip-hop, rap, disco, dance, and electronica. These trends have varied according to the popularity of every one of the rhythms and era with what has merged. Mexican cumbia has diffused throughout Central America.[2]

The Mexican cumbia has adapted versions of Colombian music like Peruvian cumbia or Argentine cumbia, among others. This diversity has appeared in different ways. For example, originally the northern cumbia (cumbia nortea) was usually played with accordion and consists of tunes with few chords and slower speed than original cumbia. This musical subset of cumbia includes artists such as Ramn Ayala, Acapulco Tropical, Bronco, Lmite, and Los Barn de Apodaca. In southern cumbia, however, the accordion is replaced by piano or organ, and the pace is faster and more elaborated both harmonically and instrumentally than in the original cumbia. Notable artists of this style include Los Sonnors, Socios del Ritmo, and Chico Che.

Other subgenres of Mexican cumbia include Cumbia Mariachi, Cumbia Andina Mexicana, and Cumbia Sonidera. Orchestral Cumbia is another variant represented by big orchestras like Pablo Beltrn Ruiz, Orquesta Tampico, Orquesta Coatzacoalcos, Roy Luis among others, who popularized many cumbia songs accompanied by a full big band sound.

The emergence of the original Mexican ensemble for performing cumbia emerged in the early 1940s in the orchestras of Rafael de Paz and Tony Camargo.[8] Rafael de Paz and Tony Camargo added the metallic sounds from Cuban music into cumbia music when Luis Carlos Meyer (native of Colombia) migrated to Mexico carrying the cumbia songs and dances and porros (folk dances) of his country. Cumbia originated in Colombia, and variations have been made in various countries based on the original Colombian style.[9] There have been various writers who have analyzed the cross-country spread of Cumbia and both its effects on listeners.[10] Both styles of ensembles were merged due to Meyers not having the traditional Colombian instrumentation. This is shown in the recordings of RCA Vctor Mexico by 1945 when they were already popular.[11]

The traditional Bolero music in Mexico of Cuban and Puerto Rican trios included maracas, and the predominant Cuban music of the time as shown in films of the time, giving an account of the adoption of these instruments.

In Colombia, Lucho Bermdez already was playing cumbia songs starting in 1940. He used an orchestra with a greater number of instruments that differed with the ones used in Mexico, being based mainly on saxophones and clarinets that are used to play the melody, along with an orchestral base. His music appeared in national films, but in the Mexican style.[12] One reason why Lucho Bermdez decided to leave Colombia was because there were not many quality recording studios, so he was invited to Argentina to record in studios of superior quality (such as RCA Vctor).[13] It was not until 1963 that his works were truly dispersed at the inauguration of Inravisin.[14] Carmen Rivero in 1962, integrated not only these instruments but also the timpani (drum), marking the stops, starts, and exits of the orchestra within the same musical theme. This was a style not seen in the Colombian recordings.[15] This conductor is supported by the musical arrangements of the renowned and international Mexican author Fernando Z. Maldonado who accentuated the use of trumpets as well as the musical stops of the Cuban dances derived from the Danzn.

'Psychedelic' is a buzzword being used a lot these days, especially to sell evermore obscure treasures dug up from the world's once lost, now rediscovered, international musical archives. In some instances calling the music 'psych' is a bit of a stretch - just because it's weird or dressed up in imported trappings from the same era does not make it necessarily so - and at other times it seems to be merely cashing in on a trend.

Happily this is not generally the case when applied to cumbia, because this venerable genre of Colombian music with an international reach truly did go through a psychedelic period. Especially in Peru, where it is also experiencing a genuine resurgence of interest among contemporary musicians and audiences alike, from South America to the United States, Europe and beyond. Psychedelic rock (especially the Latin-flavoured kind, as practiced by Santana, Malo, Azteca and the like) and cumbia came of age together in the mid to late 1960s under parallel circumstances. In Peru (and to a lesser extent Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia) the tools of rock and roll - namely electric guitar and organ - were already quite popular among the youth of the day and it makes perfect sense that this originally acoustic Afro-Colombian coastal social dance music would be reborn under the influence of psychedelic culture by the late 1960s, in order to make it relevant to the younger generation. Add to that the strong surf culture in places like coastal Peru and Mexico and conditions were ripe for just the sort of experimentation sampled here. In addition it can be said that 'imported' hippie culture and rock and roll were seen as a real threat to order and decency by dictatorships from Brazil to Cuba. So when many Latin American governments decided to repress the rock and roll 'rebellion' and psychedelic youth culture swirling around them, some of that vibe and energy was sublimated and folded into more marginalised and nationalistically acceptable tropical musical formats like samba, cumbia or salsa.

Peru has had its share of great electric guitarists bending strings to the rolling beats of cumbia - from Enrique Delgado to Jos Luis Carballo - who came from its own important domestic tradition of criollo guitar music as much as rock). So it's not an exaggeration to say cumbia peruana (and regional variants at times referred to as cumbia andina, cumbia selvtica, and more recently chicha) has had the lion's share of Carlos Santana influences evident in the mix. For this reason we start the compilation with a suite of five vintage Peruvian recordings from some of the greats like Juaneco y su Combo. Interestingly the Peruvian psych sound so prevalent in the early 1970s had a profound effect on the originators of cumbia hence we offer the two fine examples from 1970s Colombia that follow. We round out the mix with a gaggle of contemporary artists from Chile, Mexico, USA, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, and Germany, bringing the psychedelic tropical vibe up to date while still retaining the trippy trappings of yesteryear.

In Mexico City today you can find live cumbia in dance salons, bars, and public parties like the ones at market anniversaries and outdoor church fairs. You usually hear a mix of cumbias from early classic to electro, depending on the DJ.

This place feels like a community center, with bright lights and lots of space to dance. It is uninterested in being cool. There are fans blowing cool air, the alcohol is reasonably priced, and everybody dances. Check their Facebook page to see when cumbia bands are playing.

Show your love of the game by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon so that we can keep churning out interviews with legendary producers, feature the best emerging rap talent in the game, and gift you the only worthwhile playlists left in this streaming hellscape.

How did a rhythmic pattern originating from the Caribbean coast of Colombia during their long struggle for independence end up shaping the very conception of what popular music is for an entire continent? From the rodeo-discos and ballrooms of East Texas, to the rough, immigrant-built villas miserias way below the tropic of Capricorn, the skipping cadence of cumbia has been the backbone of the entire musical cosmovision of Latinidad.

3a8082e126