Rumba is a family of percussive rhythms, song and dance. It originates in Cuba as a combination of the musical traditions of Spanish colonizers and of Africans brought to Cuba as slaves. It is secular, with no religious connections. The details of how it developed are not fully known.
The term spread in the 1930s and 1940s to the faster popular music of Cuba (the Peanut Vendor was a classic), where it was used as a catch-all term, rather as salsa today. Also, the term is used in the international Latin-American dance syllabus, where it is a misnomer: the music used for this slower dance is the bolero-son.
The term is also used today for some kinds of Spanish popular music, as part of the so-called Cantes de ida y vuelta, or music that developed between both sides of the atlantic. Flamenco Rumba in particular is more related to the Guaracha, an ancestor of Cuban Rumba. .
