Ballroom rumba

Rhumba, also known as ballroom rumba, is a genre of ballroom music and dance that appeared in the East Coast of the United States during the 1930s. It combined American big band music with Afro-Cuban rhythms, primarily the son cubano, but also conga and rumba. Although taking its name from the latter, ballroom rumba differs completely from Cuban rumba in both its music and its dance. Hence, some authors prefer the Americanized spelling of the word (rhumba) to distinguish between them.

Music

Although the term rhumba began to be used by American record companies to label all kinds of Latin music between 1913 and 1915, the history of rhumba as a specific form of ballroom music can be traced back to May 1930, when Don Azpiazú and his Havana Casino Orchestra recorded their song "El manisero" (The Peanut Vendor) in New York City. This single, released four months later by Victor, became a hit, becoming the first Latin song to sell 1 million copies in the United States. The song, composed by Moisés Simons, is a son-pregón arranged, in this case, for Azpiazú's big band featuring three saxophones, two cornets, banjo, guitar, piano, violin, bass, and trap drums. With vocals by Antonio Machín and a trumpet solo (the first one in the recorded history of Cuban music) by Remberto Lara, the recording, arranged by saxophonist Alfredo Brito, attempted to adapt the Cuban son to the style of ballroom music prevalent at the time in the East Coast.

Soon, Azpiazú's style was followed by other Cuban artists such as Armando Oréfiche and the Lecuona Cuban Boys, who had extensive international tours in the 1930s. Their style has been often described as ballroom conga, since they used to borrow conga rhythms in songs such as "Para Vigo me voy".