Cumbia Villera

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The Cumbia Villera is a newer sub-genre of the traditional Colombian music style Cumbia , which originated in Argentina in the late 1990s. The name comes from the common name for slums in Argentina, Villa Miseria , which means slum-cumbia in German .

The style was founded by Pablo Lescano and his band Flor de Piedra in 1999 and extends the traditional cumbia rhythm to include electronic sounds and monotonous, technoid-like riffs . Another characteristic are the lyrics , which deal with sex, drugs and crime in the slum milieu, but in contrast to hip-hop and Brazilian funk, they are never glorifying violence, but rather humorous.

At the turn of the millennium, the Cumbia Villera was together with the Cuarteto the most successful form of pop music in Argentina, and it quickly became popular in neighboring countries.

history

Cumbia music originally comes from Colombia, but has also been popular in Argentina since the 1970s, especially among the working class and the inhabitants of the slums, the Villas Miserias . In the big cities, the so-called Bailantas , a kind of discotheque , where only cumbia music was played. In the 1990s, the cumbia wave spilled over to the youth of the middle and upper classes, and numerous bands emerged whose music style is known as Cumbia Romántica .

The Cumbia Villera emerged as a backlash to this soon to be very commercialized movement. The keyboardist Pablo Lescano from the band Amar Azul , which can be attributed to the Cumbia Romántica movement, came up with the idea of ​​founding a cumbia band in 1999 that would explicitly deal with the life of the lower class and not just with romantic themes. The result of his considerations was the band Flor de Piedra , which quickly developed into one of the most successful Argentine cumbia bands. Pablo Lescano called his music Cumbia Cabeza . Cabeza - Spanish for head - is a colloquial Argentine term that means guy and is particularly widespread among the lower classes.

Flor de Piedra's debut album entered the Argentine charts, and the music industry soon took advantage of the movement for its own purposes. Most of the bands that jumped on the Flor de Piedra wave consisted of professional contract musicians or were put together for auditions. The name Cumbia Villera comes from the title of the debut album by the band Yerba Brava , Cumbia Villera , which originally came from the "romantic" camp, but in 1999 mimicked the style of Flor de Piedra. The style of music spread quickly in other Latin American countries and made serious competition there to classical music styles such as salsa or merengue .

In 2003, as a direct reaction to the Cumbia Villera wave, the broadcasting of music on radio and television was banned on the basis of a new guideline issued by the Argentine broadcasting authority COMFER , the texts of which were either glorifying or uncritical about drug use. After a short time, this led to a sharp decline in sales of the music genre. As a reaction to the guideline, a gentler version of the Cumbia Villera was created around groups such as La Base , Néstor en Bloque and Agrupación Marilyn , which is based on the minimalist sound structure of the Cumbia Villera, but whose lyrics do not deal with violence and drug use, but with partying and be about love. This movement is sometimes called the Cumbia Villera Light , sometimes called the Cumbia Base .

From 2005, parallel to the traditional cumbia villera scene, there was a wave of mash-up-like mixtures of the style with reggaeton and hip-hop . The protagonists of this phenomenon, which originated in the underground of Buenos Aires, are the DJs Villa Diamante , Daleduro and Oro 11 . In Europe, especially in Estonia, ElMayonesa , who describes himself as a “victim of globalization”, developed and spread new cumbia fusions.

music

The Cumbia Villera processes elements of techno , trance and electro pop , often also reggae and dancehall . The musical pattern is similar in many songs. A pounding 4-4 ​​time with about 80-95 bpm and a conga on the unstressed beat forms the basis. This is overlaid by many percussion instruments , especially various types of rattle such as maracas and cabasas , so that the rhythm is ultimately very funky , and an often repetitive melody, which is accompanied by echo-like synthesizer riffs. Sometimes all sounds are produced electronically, but mostly “real” instruments such as the accordion, the guitar or various drums are also involved. Similar to hip-hop , a crucial criterion is that the sound sounds fat .

Important musical characteristics of the Cumbia Villera

  • short, concise, repetitive synthesizer riffs
  • Use of spherical pads as background
  • Frequent use of sliding pitch changes in keyboard sounds ( pitch bend )
  • Frequent use of the wah wah effect on the guitar
  • Frequent use of "cheap" sounding keyboard sounds

Basic rhythm

Zählzeit:   1 - - - 2 - - - 3 - - - 4 - - -
Kick:       + - - - + - - - + - - - + - + +
Conga:      - - + - - - + - - - + - - - + -
Maracas:    + - - + + - - + + - - + + - - +

dance

In general, the Cumbia Villera is part of dance music . As with the classic cumbia, dancing is done in pairs. The basic step is based on a rocking movement of the foot. There are also dance steps for individual songs that are shown on television and are well known in the discos.

Texts and meaning

Because of its origins in the slum environment and the content of the lyrics, the Cumbia Villera is also compared to the gangsta rap movement from the ghettos of the USA.

The Cumbia Villera groups make the poor lifestyle in the slums the main theme in their texts. They present him as honorable and worth living in. The residents of the villas feel strengthened in their self-esteem and see the Cumbieros as idols.

Another topic is the racism from which the "Negros" , as the inhabitants of the poor neighborhoods are called by the upper class (whether they are dark-skinned or not) suffer, is denounced in the songs. In addition, the texts criticize politicians and especially the police , who are described as violent and racist. Often it is also about sex and drug crime and about the hard, but also often entertaining everyday life in the slums, B. is expressed in numerous texts in which it is described how a group of "Negros" comfortably drink wine or beer on the roadside. The football fan culture is also discussed in numerous texts.

Some critics said the Cumbia Villera was "dumbing down the people" in its early days and warned of the social consequences of the texts. They criticized the fact that the “bad lifestyle” in the slums is portrayed as an ideal in the lyrics, but also the misogynistic tone of some songs in which women are described as pure sex objects. In some cities in Argentina ruled by right-wing mayors, Cumbia Villera bands were banned from performing because of these criticisms. The decisive factor for the broadcasting ban on radio and television, however, was the uncritical description of drug use, which is generally considered an administrative offense in Argentina as an apología a la droga .

The texts of the Cumbia Villera contain many slang expressions that come from the slums and sometimes also from the criminal milieu. Examples are chorro or rocho (thief, see also Vesre ), fierro (weapon), vitamina (cocaine), pasta (ecstasy), botón (“bull”, traitor) and yuta (police, “ cop ”).

Cumbia Villera fashion

The appearance of the Cumbia Villera was accompanied by a fad similar to the fashion of the hip-hop movement. Baggy trousers, expensive sneakers, sweatshirts with hoods and baseball caps set the fashion for boys and men, while women wore short mini-skirts and colorful tops to go out, and surf shorts and wide jeans during the day.

This fad has largely become the standard fashion in the slums today. It is particularly widespread among petty criminals, the so-called chorros .

Characteristic songs

  • Damas Free - Quiero Vitamina
  • Yerba Brava - Pibe Cantina
  • Guachin - La Danza del Tablón
  • Los Pibes Chorros - La Colorada
  • La Base - Sabroso (example for Cumbia Villera Light )

Important bands

  • Damas Free
  • Los Pibes Chorros
  • El Indio
  • Guachin
  • La Base
  • Yerba Brava
  • $ ipaganBoy
  • Mala Fama
  • La Piba
  • Jimmy y su combo negro
  • Amar y Yo
  • Flor de Piedra
  • Dany y la Roka
  • Canto Negro
  • Supermerka2
  • Una de Kal
  • Piola Vago
  • La Banda de Lechuga
  • Tito y la Liga
  • El Mc Caco
  • El Judas
  • El Dipy

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barragán Sandi, Fernando: La cumbia villera, testimonio del jóven urbano marginal , p. 7
  2. ↑ Pautas de evaluación para los contenidos de cumbia villera  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Directive of the broadcasting authority COMFER@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / elortiba.galeon.com  
  3. ↑ El sabor local de la vanguardia: El Mayonesa es un mendocino que con su fusión de cumbia, electrónica, hip hop y reggaeton agitó toda Europa del Este. ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Diario Uno, December 22, 2011  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diariouno.com.ar
  4. ^ Sosa, Catalina: Cumbia Villera: ¿fenómeno popular? version available online

Web links