Cumbia Boom, is the ultimate Latin tropical music and dance learning experience that will have everyone jamming, moving, grooving, and having a blast while learning about Latin-American music and culture through Cumbia. An experience for the whole family!

About Cumbia

Cumbia is a popular dance and music style that originated in Colombia and has spread throughout Latin America and the world. It is characterized by its fast-paced, rhythmic moves and catchy melodies, and has become a beloved form of entertainment and cultural expression (Tangella, 2023).

About Cumbia Boom learning experience

Cumbia Boom immerses participants in the vibrant culture of Cumbia through a dynamic and interactive environment where sound, movement, colour, and expression converge to create a unique and exciting learning experience.

In this program, students delve into both the historical and practical aspects of Cumbia music, often referred to as "The musical backbone of Latin America" (Jasmine Garsd, 2015). They will learn the fundamentals of Cumbia rhythm and dance through engaging activities involving music, dance, and play. Hands-on experiences include experimenting with call and response, chanting, dancing, traditional costume dress-ups, and utilizing body percussion and percussive instruments. The workshops emphasize creative exploration, fundamentals of rhythm and sound, body language, imagination, and responsive movement.

Additionally, Spanish language vocabulary and expressions are integrated into the workshop and performance, providing an immersive linguistic component to the learning experience.

Students will not only have a great time, but also practise and extend skills in curriculum areas such as the arts, intercultural understanding, humanities, creative thinking, language and health and physical education.

The workshops are created and run by professional artists members of La Descarga Band, an iconic Latin-Australian band born in 2010 in Melbourne, as a tribute to the folkloric rhythms of the coasts of Colombia and as a preserver of its cultural heritage. The workshops can include other musician guests from La Descarga band. All facilitators hold a valid teacher registration or working with children check/permit.

Workshop structure

The workshop lasts 1 hour and is divided into six stages:

1. Introduction: What is Cumbia? Where is it from? How does it sound? What instruments? What influences and background? During this stage, we often use a digital projector or a world map to place the topic in a geographical context and introduce ourselves and the practice.

2. Beat-box: Interactive approach to the rhythm using voices as instruments with band live interventions. Explanation of the sounds of the instruments and rhythm using voices mimicking the instruments.

3. Percussion time: Interactive approach to the rhythm using percussive instruments with live interventions and music playback. Explanation of the sounds of the instruments and rhythm using instruments.

4. Dance demo: Cumbia dance demonstration by facilitators: A performance by the artists showcasing the dance, accompanied by an explanation of the movements and their significance.
5. Interactive moment: An engaging dance session with volunteer students and teachers, featuring live interventions and music playback. Volunteer students are provided with traditional costumes, and artists guide them through the dance steps while the band or audio plays.

6. Performance and dance time: Facilitators perform and dance with student participation, incorporating instruments, dancing, and music playback.

Learning intentions

Learning intention 1: I can emulate the rhythm of a drum, maraca, or clave for Cumbia rhythm using my voice.

Learning Intention 2: I can play Cumbia rhythm using a shaker/maraca, a drum and/or a clave.

Learning intention 3: I can dance a basic cumbia rhythm and follow the basic steps and movements.

Learning intention 4: I can present information related to Cumbia music and dance including place of origin, instrumentation, costume/dress and lyrical content.

Learning intention 5: I can say several words in Spanish (numbers, greetings) and sing the chorus of a Cumbia song in Spanish.

Additional abilities and skills developed through the workshops include:

· Meaning and interpretation, forms and elements including rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture as they make and respond to music.

· Listen as performers and as audience, extending their awareness of themselves and others as performers and as audience.

· Awareness of the body as they incorporate actions using different body parts, body zones and bases.

Physical and mental awareness through movement and sequences incorporating body language.
Sense of space, corporal dynamics and relationships using groupings, objects and props.

· Fundamental and Cumbia movement skills integrating choreography with compelling narratives, bringing each contextual component to life.

· Technical skills including accuracy and awareness of body alignment.

· meaning and interpretation, elements and forms including shapes and sequences of dances as they make and respond to dance.

· A sense of belonging in Australia’s multicultural society.

· Intercultural Understanding.

· Geography.

· Teamwork.

“Cumbia Boom is so fun and engaging! All our students loved it. It is an effective approach to learning from diversity, teamwork, and cultural awareness and the program is aligned with AITSL Standards and Australian curriculum (The Arts, Intercultural Capability, Languages and Health and Physical Education), highly recommended.”

Specialist Teacher, Harkaway Hills College

Health and wellbeing

Overall, cumbia is a fun, engaging activity that boosts physical fitness and mental well-being. In addition to being enjoyable, dancing cumbia offers various health benefits:

Cardio workout: Enhances cardiovascular health by increasing heart rate and strengthening heart muscles, potentially lowering blood pressure and reducing heart disease risk.
Weight loss: Aids in burning calories, with a typical session burning 300-400 calories depending on intensity and duration.
Improved coordination and balance: The intricate footwork and body movements improve balance and coordination, which is particularly beneficial for older adults.
Stress relief: The energetic and upbeat rhythms help reduce stress and improve mood.
Social connections: Often danced in groups, cumbia fosters social connections and a sense of community.

Workshop facilitators

Jorge Leiva is an interdisciplinary Colombian-Australian artist and educator based in Melbourne with international recognition. As an artist, he is active in the fields of music, visual arts, and community arts. His philosophy is embodied in the motto "peopleartpeople," a life statement committed to connecting people through the arts and inspiring social change. Jorge is an experienced educator who has worked in arts and language in diverse environments and countries. He has published as an arts researcher, educator, poet, and visual artist.

Jorge Leiva is a recognized musician who has been composing, writing, and performing music for over 20 years. He is one of the top percussionists in Australia's Latin music scene, having performed and collaborated with world-renowned artists and bands such as The Cat Empire, Juanes, and Li Saumet. In the field of music for screen, his work has been featured in international award-winning short films, global social campaigns, and advertising campaigns.

Some of his notable awards and scholarships include the Creative Australia Contemporary Music Program (2024), Youth for Peace Award from the Psychologists for Peace Interest Group of the Australian Psychological Society (2020), the Languages Teaching Scholarship from the Department of Education and Training Victoria (Australia, 2013), and the South Project Inc. for "EL TARRO," a leading art project across the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, 2011). He also won the First Prize in the Art Competition Plaza & Janes Ed. (Colombia, 1998).

http://www.jorgeleiva.com.au/

Kathleen Gonzalez is a Melbourne-based Colombian , experimental and contemporary artist. She also is a producer in cross-cultural forms, ethno-dance writer, artistic director and founder of Tunjos y Cantaros Ethnologic Dance Company and Ethnodanceology Art, a study of dance through the application of a number of disciplines such as anthropology, musicology, ethnomusicology, and ethnography. It proposes ideas in new multi-ethnic phases and stages to encourage future diversity of human’s legacy and expression into this new era.

Kathleen researches contemporary and interactive dance that is emotional, exploring the wisdom and ancestral practices. Always striving to understand new original forms of movement, and performative arts. She encourages resonance between art forms and expressions that touch everyone, often addressing cultural exchange on ecological, political, and social environments within communities.

She addresses terms of decolonisation through a curatorial framework that crossover practices that embrace intergenerational issues to standing up for the rights of universal cohesion and human equity.

With more than 23 years of experience in the artistic field, Kathleen is passionate about traditional and ancestral music, inspiring her to collaborate with different musical bands as a drummer and dancer in Melbourne.

More about her work: www.ethnodanceology.com

About La Descarga

La Descarga is an iconic Latin-Australian band born in 2010 in Melbourne, as a tribute to the folkloric rhythms of the coasts of Colombia and as a preserver of its cultural heritage. It has evolved for over a decade through diverse music, dance and cultural collaborations, into a forerunner of Latin-Aussie-tropical music. La Descarga has performed in some of Australia’s most beloved festivals and venues.

La Descarga is also devoted to education and the promotion and teaching of Cumbia and tropical Colombian music and dance. Being able to educate young people about diversity, identity and self-determination in a multicultural society such as Victoria, while sharing aspects of Colombian culture, is one of the main aims of the band. For this purpose La Descarga has developed Cumbia Boom.

https://ladescargaband.com/