The history of music always reveals fantastic twists and turns, and is one of the ways that we know things are much more connected than they seem, and also that the world is indeed a lot smaller than we might think. There might be moments when you hear a beat in a song that reminds you of another beat that you know from thousands of miles away. You might at first dismiss it as coincidence only to discover that there is a deep relationship beyond coincidence. Like the six degrees of separation, music works by association, and sometimes it travels faster than the speed of light. So, you might not think that you could be traveling in the midwest, and stop at a particularly gorgeous luxury hotel in Indianapolis, and spend the day shopping and the night listening to Cumbia.
Most people might not think of Cumbia and Indianapolis in the same sentence, and it’s possible that at one time these words did not really know each other very well. But the Latino population in Indianapolis is much denser now, and the city’s shifting again to reflect new cultural influences. This makes it a particularly exciting time to be here, because there’s a lot more to see and do, and the music just got that much better. It’s possible now to see performances by stars like Peewee Gonzalez, the former singer for the Kumbia Kings.
He comes from Washington and was raised in Texas, where his musical knowledge was formed. He’s still not at a drinking age, so there’s time for a thousand more influences to come in, and in this world, anything is possible. Cumbia comes from Colombia, and has become immensely popular in northern Mexico and in border towns, and generally is taking root everywhere. But to even call it a Latin American form might not be precise. It is a kind of courtship dance, and combines rhythms from Colombian indigenous influences, along with European dance forms, and the heartbeat of it very likely has its origins in West Africa. Indianapolis is just another stop on the way to somewhere and something else.