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Show "Uos thorn dinvront, nnywnv' Ami yet. Wlmt Klvo.s thomMOmo wort of relationship?" Tlu. nimlm mul Un, HIlmbft h In t,t many things In common: , ( lH,;in wi,h' words have ,,u '"" l',.r of h-ttors the Sm,uo ondlng, Illmost Ul0 sound bet raying tholr African orl! f. 11 ,M1; ,ni ,lnna's nro Pssp- t l""y typical of their country the rumba having become almost a s.vn.bol of Cuba and the samba of Brazil, l.oth are featured at their country's carnival, and finally both are products of the combination combina-tion of a basic negro pattern, altered al-tered by Spanish or Portuguese influences in-fluences and tinted by the atmosphere atmos-phere of ereole America. "Cuban music needs no- descrip- A NEIGHBOR VKKSl'S KVMUA uvintT populiirlty In the 1? "of tho Hrlll.m typ-:'"A typ-:'"A Aco. t" SumlM, 111,8 '0l i i eroius rival to Cuba's ;ff" '. A Wherever ft daneo-..Iwdcoiiplossway daneo-..Iwdcoiiplossway to the :-dl ;','liytlim of some Latin meUHly. Kople all over lr;,frK' trV "Wt" the samba -Tovor the rumba? What ing its best characteristics. The famous Rio Carnival is the yearly apotheosis of the samba. Some time before the carnival, Samba schools where carnival songs and dances are practiced, are organized in the poorer sections of the capital. capi-tal. A great number of sambas are composed especially for that occasion and are featured later in the Carnival. And not only is the samba interesting as a dance-form but al as a song-form, the words of the samba-songs being a most amusing mixture of sentiment and irony. The rumba may be said to have reached the crest of its popularity in the United States. As for the samba, introduced to this country around 1938, it has rapidly captured cap-tured the hearts and the feet of American dancers. There is no reason why, different yet similar, these two dances may not as true Good Neighbors share the honor of representing Latin America on the dance floors of the United States. and danced to different variations such as the "Batuque," a negro profane dance, and the famous "Maxixe," a sort of nationalized derivation of the Polka, the word "samba" is now the generic name for a popular Brazilian dance and song-form, "portraying as no other oth-er the Brazilian temperament with its unique softness, its mild melancholy mel-ancholy and its exalted expression." expres-sion." It has been said that the samba is more a vehicle for that spontaneous expression than a se.t and definite pattern of steps. A Brazilian improvises while dancing danc-ing the samba, never keeping the shoulders still as in the rumba, but swaying the whole body in an extremely ex-tremely graceful and harmonious motion. The fact that the samba of Rio de Janeiro or "Carioca Samba" has unlike some folk-dances always al-ways been performed by couples, permitting it to te easily adapted to ball-room dancing without los- i tion, for its sensuous rhythms have ' swept the world. The slaves I brought these rhythms from their j native Africa, and the early Spanish Span-ish settlers brought nostalgic melodies mel-odies from Spain. The latter produced pro-duced the 'guajiarsras,' songs of the Cuban countryman played to the accompaniment of the guitar. The former produced the 'rumba,' distinctively primitive in character. charac-ter. The mixture of the two gave birth to the 'son,' the modern Cuban Cub-an ball-room dance sometimes erroneously er-roneously confused with the rumba." rum-ba." The rumba itself was, until quite recently, only danced by the colored population of Cuba. Obviously Ob-viously African and almost ritual in nature, the dance was performed per-formed to primitive melodies punctuated punc-tuated by the throbbing rhythm of "bongos" or drums. Even today the bongos play an important part in the dancing of the rumba. Before Be-fore each performance, the skin of the instruments is exposed to a flame to make it taut. "The bongo does not weep, as a violin would. It laughs or smiles ironically. And never in the rumba is there a drum soliloquy but the enamoured dialogue dia-logue of two drums." Stepping out into a ball-room dance, the rumba has acquired sophistication and a certain smoothness, without losing its graceful and exciting qualities. Difficult to dance well, the rumba is "a challenge to the technique of truly accomplished dancers." Like most folk-dances, the samba sam-ba has passed through different stages before becoming what it is today. Called byNdifferent names |