Caribbean beat becomes global dance craze – Yahoo! News |
Posted by admin on Oct 16 2009
' 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. Until just a few years ago, "cumbia digital" or "nu-cumbia" was only mentioned on obscure music blogs. In July, it was a hit at the Latin American Music Conference in New York, where it was declared the latest global dance craze. ... Mexico and Argentina were the first countries to adopt cumbia decades ago. Today, a new generation in those countries is taking what was considered a backwater style and giving it a cosmopolitan spin. '