Talk:Rumba (dance)

Description of basic steps
Should we really describe a basic in so much detail? Especially since basics differ so much in different places? I've seen three variations, and the one on this page makes four. Bihal 02:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Rename to Ballroom rumba
I suggest we rename this article to "Ballroom rumba" or "Bolero", to distinguish it from the dance with the same name danced on Cuba.62.142.46.22 00:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree this suggestion. This article suffers from the same ambiguity and conflation as the Rumba entry does.  At least as far as the dance goes I would go with Ballroom rumba rather than Bolero, if for no other reason than because the word "Rumba" is so widely used in the Ballroom community.


 * Agree. The ballroom article should be written to carefully distinguish between American and International ballroom rumba. The steps in the article currently are American style, International does not use the box step. This looks like a good reference: Vagary 05:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree Paragraph by paragraph this article talks about two different things, the one an Afro-Cuban percussion, dance and song style, the other a social dance style which, in both dance and music, corresponds to the Cuban bolero-son. In this latter sense it was first added to the English (and related American) version of latin ballroom dances, then later into the international latin dance style.


 * On the other issue, I'm against the dance-sport title for the ballroom version of any of these dances: it is more inclusive to call them social dances. Ballroom dance would also be accurate, except that traditional ballrooms are a scarce facility nowadays. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:17, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Sort of agree. There should be a disambiguation page called "Rumba (dance)", which points to an article for afro-cuban rumba, and another for ballroom rumba (which might also have a redirect for bolero/bolero-son, or something like that).  It appears that other people agree as well.  So why hasn't anyone done anything about this yet?  Would everyone agree that this article ought to be made into a disambiguation page instead?  --Rumba y Son (talk) 05:31, 20 April 2011 (UTC)


 * No. There's already a page Rumba (disambiguation), which could be developed. This page is basically about Ballroom rumba, and could be moved to that title, leaving the present title as a redirect. But we don't usually put the wider term first, and 'Ballroom' is a term which covers dozens of pages. Hence the format 'Rumba (dance)', with the key noun first. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm fine with letting things be for now. However, I just wanted to clarify what kind of structure I think would make sense, since I didn't explain it well above, and also I'm aware now of the existing disambiguation page for "Rumba".  I think there should be two separate articles for rumba dance, one named "Afro-Cuban Rumba (dance)", and another named "Ballroom Rumba (dance)".  Perhaps the "Rumba (dance)" article should be renamed to the latter, but I don't think it's appropriate to have "Rumba (dance)" just be a redirect to ballroom rumba, since "rumba" alone could refer either to ballroom rumba or afro-cuban rumba, depending on the context.


 * Or instead of calling the ballroom rumba article "Ballroom Rumba (dance)", perhaps it should be named "Bolero-Son (dance)", and have the terms "ballroom rumba" redirect to it that way. For the rest of this suggestion, however, I will assume that the ballroom rumba article is named "Ballroom Rumba (dance)".


 * So the thing the ties everything together is the disambiguation page "Rumba". On that page, under the "Dance" section, would be a link to the "Afro-Cuban Rumba (dance)" article, and another link to the "Ballroom Rumba (dance)" article.


 * On a side note, regarding your point about "ballroom" being a more general term than "rumba", I'm using the terms "afro-cuban" and "ballroom" as adjectives in this context, to qualify/describe/differentiate which kind of "rumba" dance is being referred to. Wouldn't "rumba" be the term that's more general in this case, since it could apply to two different dances, while "afro-cuban rumba" and "ballroom rumba" make it explicitly clear which kind of rumba is being referred to?


 * Anyways, those are just my arguments for this issue, but I'm not going to press it and start making changes to the article(s) if we can't come to a consensus, I'm fine with just letting things be. --Rumba y Son (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Some issues ...
I've tagged this article to note both the problems with factual accuracy and the suggestion to split the article. Here are my thoughts in detail (apologies for the length, but there is a lot to talk about here):

In the section called "Cuban Rumba", we have the following sentence: "Later, Prohibition in the United States caused a flourishing of the relatively-tolerated cabaret Rumba, as American tourists flocked to see crude sainetes (short plays) which featured racial stereotypes and generally, though not always, Rumba."

Are we sure hear that this was in fact real Cuban rumba (ie, guaguancó, yambú, columbia), and not some variant of the son that was mislabeled by the American public.´ Can we get some kind of source on this?

We also have the following sentence:

"Rumba is thought to have contributed to the origin of the cha-cha-cha, and indeed most figures (if not all, somehow) can be reinterpreted in cha-cha-cha."

Why is this in the "Cuban rumba" section? This is now clearly refering to ballroom rumba, which again is not even in the rumba family. Ballroom rumba is an Americanized version of the Cuban son. Besides, this strikes me as a highly dubious claim. The dance "cha cha chá" is a clear derivative of the mambo, which is in turn a member of the Cuban "son" family of dances. Ballroom rumba is also in this same family, sharing among other things a similar basic, which is why you can reinterpret figures easily between the dances, but it doesn't at all follow that Ballroom rumba contributed to the origin of the cha cha chá in any significant way. It certainly isn't in any way a parent dance.

"Traditional belief holds that the Rumba was originally contrived within the Afro-Cuban population in Cuba." Traditional belief? There is no doubt about this whatsoever. However this does not apply to "Ballroom rumba", it only applies to true Cuban rumba. Yet another issue that can be solved through splitting the article.

Under Early American Rumba we have the following:

"This kind of Rumba introduced into American dance salons at the beginning of the 20th century, characterized high tempo, nearly twice as fast as the modern ballroom Rumba, typical examples being the tunes The Peanut Ventor and Siboney."

So it looks like we're suddenly talking about music again, rather than dance. The Peanut Vender is not a rumba; it is a son. It may have been widely called a "Rhumba" in the United States at the time but that's a total misnomer, as any Cuban music scholar will tell you. I'm sure the same goes for Siboney. I understand that the terminology in Ballroom circles is different, but the issue should be mentioned and clearly resolved in the article. The ballroom 'lingo' should be the footnote here, not the correct terminology.

So my suggestions are, before making any changes to this article, to separate the Rumba (dance) article into two separate articles: one for Rumba and one for Ballroom rumba. This is parallel to the change I've suggested in the main Rumba article, which suffers many of the same shortcomings. Having the two separate will resolve many of the issues I've mentioned above. We just have to make it clear, in the Ballroom rumba article that it did not decend from the afro-Cuban rumba as formed in Havana and Matanzas, but rather from the Cuban son.

I agree. You must be a Virgo. Because you found more mistakes than I did. Rhumba Master 08:38, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation/Splitting
I agree that folkloric Rumba and ballroom Rumba should be separated. I'm confused about the place of the spelling "Rhumba" within all this. I thought Rhumba with an H was the ballroom word and without an H was the folkloric word... Maybe this is just in the English ballroom tradition though?

Perhaps ballroom Rumba should be called "Rumba (dancesport)", though I find the whole notion of dancesport abhorrent, it does seem to clearly delineate the competitive Ballroom styles. (Though this rather leaves the social ballroom dancer out in the cold)

rewrite
In view of above, I did a basic rewrite to establish the basic distinction between the uses of the word rumba. It also touches on a common WP phenomenon, that is, the content was a bit too US-centered. The international dance community now includes strong presence from Japan, China, Russia, Eastern Europe &c &c, all of whom compete in the major international dance competitions.

Links are needed to dance organizations world-wide. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Descriptions of dance
There is a general problem we face, in articles like this, of describing dance moves with words alone to a readership which ranges from non-dancers through naive self-taught dancers to those who have learnt from experts. If we use expert professional descriptions, they won't be generally understood or appreciated! But if we simply use ordinary language it won't be precise. Readers need to appreciate that dance is not like music: it doesn't have a form of notation which is completely satisfactory for all types of dance (and what there is of notation is designed for ballet). There are some good videos used by dance teachers which we can't use here because they are valuable products, which we will never get permission to reproduce. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:22, 6 December 2008 (UTT)


 * Hello, Ramba is a very serious love dance.Also, people like to dance to Ramba music often when they are i parties and other stufff like that.Ramba is also a dance that shows a strong male love and passion.


 * People when,they go to the the parties to dance in Ramba they usally bring instrutments to play with them like the:marracas to Ramba because ,drums&etc.Also,people dance to Ramba because it gives an influence on them and also came in the 16th century.


 * Ramba actually came from Cuba and also today people still remember the Ramba dance They speak spanish.But, still maybe,if people teached Ramba today they might do it on A different style or maybe the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.160.219.206 (talk) 00:35, 19 May 2010 (UTC)