MOYO Family day: Exploring Cuban Rumba As Resilience

When the drum was banned, the body became the drum, learn with Yuni to Rumba, tap, and make music with your body. Elders and Kids Free!
About this Event

Rumba As Resilience: MOYO'S Family Day

Saturday, October 17, 2026

Rumba was born in Cuba in the 1800s, among enslaved Africans and their descendants in Havana and Matanzas. They were denied nearly every freedom, so they made one. A stool, a table, or a glass bottle became a drum, and a gathering became a place to speak, to grieve, and to celebrate. The word rumba means party. It was also a form of protest.

If you are Black in America, this is a branch of your own family tree. The same African rhythms crossed the same ocean. When drums were outlawed for enslaved people here, the drum moved into the body: hands on the chest and thighs, feet on the floor. That practice gave us tap, and in time it gave us step and drill. Cuba banned African drums in public in 1925, and rumba survived that too. By then its rhythms had already reached New Orleans and New York and found a home in jazz.

So when you clap, tap, and dance rumba in one room, you are not learning three separate arts. You are bringing relatives back together. This is Sankofa, looking back to move forward. In plain terms, knowing where a rhythm comes from changes how you stand inside it.

Joy was the resistance then; and It's our medicine now. All are welcome in this room.

These community workshops were made possible by funding from the Coloradao Health Foundation and Black Resilience in Colorado (BRIC) Fund.

Agenda

🕑: 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Intro to Afro-Cuban Music w/ Yuni Ramos
Host: Yuni Ramos

Info: Yuni Ramos is a professional musician, dancer, composer, and choreographer from Matanzas, Cuba, who was raised in the rumba tradition of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, began touring internationally at age eight, and has performed and taught across Europe, Russia, and the Caribbean.