The Hairdryer Treatment

cumbia, old and new.

With two whacks on the stretched animal skin, the musicians flanking him let loose a percussive hailstorm that settles into a cumbia, a dance reverently performed by young Afro-Colombians. A musical mating ritual that came about in Colombia’s colonial era, it begins with a line of barefoot women in period dress, baskets balancing on their heads, sashaying toward male partners.

Now the folk rhythm has fused with such postmodern styles as electronica and hip-hop into a musical sensation in dance clubs from San Francisco to New York to Buenos Aires to Paris. African drums, native wind instruments and maracas are often replaced by guitar, bass and deejays, whose audiences favor Day-Glo sneakers and strobe lights to the more colonial attire.

solid ap article dropped today on cumbia’s colombian roots.

also, i’m similarly feeling this king coya mixtape, which is a nice musical accompaniment to the article above. def “subtle, agreeable, and flowy.”