Afro-Colombian Popular Music

Cumbia, the best-known Afro-Colombian popular music, is a modernized traditional musical style, a synthesis of Caribbean traditional musics such as porro, gaita, and folkloric cumbia. These genres feature complex polyrhythms played on a hand drum called alegre, a timekeeping drum called llamador, and a bass drum called tambora, accompanied by a large maraca called maracón or a tubular shaker called guache, voices, and flutes such as the gaita or the caña de millo. The raucous brass bands of the Caribbean...