Summary & Conclusion
The music of the Caribbean illustrates the soundscape of Africa and Europe, and this may be observed in the rhythms of Candomble, Santería, Vodou, Kumina, and Shango, as well as the popular dance-hall styles of rumba, samba, merengue, reggae, calypso and soca. While the melodies show the soundscape of Europe in their major, minor tonalities, and harmonic progressions, they show also a marked tendency to simulate the percussive influence of Africa. Ritual as well as popular dance-hall melodies appear often in the pentatonic mode (five tones) characteristic of the African landscape. Participation is shown in the call-response styles of most melodies with the chorus leader improvising the lyrics of songs, at calypso tents for example, to comment on current events. In the ritual setting, traditional lyrics are modified at will to illustrate the procedure, thus becoming "songs of action-direction," in the sense that they indicate the proper course of action to all present at the ceremony (Fleurant, 1996). The music is intimately tied to the dance, as African-derived religions in the Caribbean are danced religions in which people offer their bodies to the Lwa and Orishas who transcend them to communicate important messages to the assembly. The experience of exile and alienation is transcended when the people sing and dance; they become "acts of memories" that bring them back to Africa, the land of their ancestors. Though in captivity, they sing a song to their "King" in a strange land.
In sum, the Caribbean soundscape, offshoot of the African rhythms and sensibilities, and to some extent the Latin tinge (Spain, Portugal, and France), has evolved into a vigorous music that exhibits great regional continuity and diversity. The Caribbean has seen the rise of a variety of musical forms grounded in the African world view, from the ritual and ceremonial to the folk and popular dance-hall styles that incubated in the region, and from there invaded the rest of the world. The merengue, calypso, and rumba, traced to the Kongo-Angola region, which became predominant forms of popular and dance-hall musics until the 1960s, were fundamental in the formation of West and Central African musical styles such as "high-life" in the 1940s and 1950s and "soukous" in the 1970s. The U-shaped curve, whereby the music returns to its place of origin to spawn a new form, precedes the globalization which results from the pressures of the world market. The commodification of music and culture in the Caribbean has had a dual effect of weighing heavily on the aesthetic integrity of the arts, and at the same time disseminating it around the world. A beneficial occurrence for both the artists and the region economically, the pressures of globalization account for the fact that Caribbean musical styles such as konpa-dirèk, soca, reggae, zouk, and rasin/roots are now leading competitors, for better or for worse, on the world market. The future of the music of the Caribbean lies in the ability and creativity of regional artists and music promoters to learn to negotiate the turbulent waters of globalization to preserve the integrity of the arts while ensuring that the artists survive.
The choreography of the Rumba is highly pantomimed and improvisational and is characterized by the movement known as Vacunao, which is a pelvic movement or erotic symbolism. This movement is directly derived from the fertility dance or Congolese origin known as Yuka.
