el ambiente de la rumba
talking with rumberos

ABOUT this site

 

On rumba as a cartography of the Diaspora. Rumba is a transitory space, an international, transnational and post-national site in the making and unmaking of itself, in its performance. The geography of this site is the rumbos de la rumba, its different routes, directions, estadias in one locale and another, simultaneously when rumba is performed and fragmented by its relationship to location; once rumba is within and outside the barrio, solar, hood, ethnic group, place of origin and beyond. Rumba is its migratory condition. This world map is a world view that understand movement and sound as its epistemology. This site is the compilation of rumbas beyond place in the constant making and unmaking of place, nation and narration
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popular rumbas
popular rumbas
interactive rumba
 

One of the strategies is to use the site as a workshop with rumberos and rumberas, a place of intellectual engagement within rumba’s rules, grammar and idiosyncrasies. Rumberos and rumberas of the world are connected via home-made recordings audio and video recordings that function as video letters. Professional recordings also serve as presentation form or as a way of maintaining face, name and reputation. This site is an attempt to re-create this aural and gestic world (within the archive) based on the continuous jorneys of rumberos and rumberas. Wherever they are, in Cuba, NYC, Milan or England, we can always materialized virtually our connection. The virtuality of this site is useful then to imagine how to see and ear rumba in its various locations and articulations; as well as to expand the conversation between rumberos and rumberas of the world.

 

 

 

 

 

This site is an archive as well as an experimental space. While the archive maintains an ethnographic approach, it also contains a series of experimental pieces, some of them made in collaboration with the rumberos/ras. One of my main concers is to create an aesthetic practice that not only documents rumba but also understands my participation in this documentation as an active conceptualization, as well as an intellectual engagement with the form and practice