If you go to a Shakira concert, you may see her do this.
It's this part of her show where the drummer starts soloing and she's kind of freestyle
dancing.
And during this section, she's dancing to a variation of the exact same beat.
In its most basic form, it sounds like this.
"Cumbia de Colombia!"
Did you catch that?
"Cumbia de Colombia".
The music is called cumbia.
You can even hear it in electronic dance tracks.
And it has its own category in the Latin Grammys.
And it all started here, up near the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
I traveled to the villages where cumbia comes from.
And I learned that this specific place, here along the Magdalena River, was fertile soil
from which this music could grow.
But cumbia is in fact a blend of several strong musical traditions.
Mainly African and indigenous, but also European, mixing together to make something new.
Something totally unique to the time and place from which it came.
Okay now just watch what these two drummers are playing.
We can also look at this another way.
This beat is the backbone of cumbia.
And I wanted to find out where it came from, so I flew to the beautiful Caribbean city
of Cartagena and drove south to a village that was founded hundreds of years ago.
In the early 1500s, the Spanish came to Colombia as part of their Latin American conquest.
And with them they brought more than 100,00 captive Africans.
But some of these slaves managed to escape and build their own communities.
And that's how this village was formed.
This place is the first known settlement of slaves who rebelled and started their own
community back in the 17th century.
And so because of that, they were able to maintain a great deal of their African culture.
The residents of this village preserve their history with music, which is based on the
rhythms their ancestors brought over from the homeland.
These songs are a living, breathing part of the town's culture and history.
And with time, these beats started to spread in the region, influencing different styles
of music.
Does this sound familiar?
This is the beating heart of cumbia and no matter how many instruments are incorporated,
or in what country it's played, the beat always stays the same.
The drumbeat brought over from Africa is the main ingredient of cumbia, but eventually
the rhythm started blending with instruments from a totally different musical culture:
that of the indigenous people of Colombia.
I came to visit the Gaiteros de San Jacinto, a musical group that has been playing cumbia
since the 1950's.
In 2007 they won a Latin Grammy for their folk album and they're able to continue by
training up new generations, who keep these old traditions alive.
We're in the backyard of one of the drummers,
who's showing me how they make their own instruments
using the same methods their ancestors did, like these maracas.
And this flute, called the Gaita, which is a quintessential indigenous instrument.
So this is what the cultural fusion of the root of cumbia looks like: you have the Gaita,
a key element in indigenous music, and then you have the drum section playing rhythms
directly influenced by the African village just an hour from here.
Together they create this unique cumbia sound.
In addition to the African rhythm and the indigenous wind instruments, there's one more
ingredient to this fusion: the European influence.
The cumbia is always evolving and there's one
more European influence that is more recent.
It's this instrument that Yeison is holding: the accordion.
And in fact, it was his grandfather, dubbed the "King of cumbia," who traded his Gaita
flute for an accordion, thus changing cumbia forever.
But once formed in this region, it didn't stay put.
In the past century, cumbia has spread throughout all of Latin America, further evolving in
the process.
While I was in Colombia, I shot an extra bonus episode for
our friends over at Eater.
It's about this amazing fruit market in Bogota that I visited and it was really fun.
I think you'll love it.
It's gonna be published on Eater's YouTube channel, so head over there to subscribe and
I hope you like the episode.