Rhumba

[1][2][3] Although the term rhumba began to be used by American record companies to label all kinds of Latin music between 1913 and 1915, the history of rhumba as a specific form of ballroom music can be traced back to May 1930, when Don Azpiazú and his Havana Casino Orchestra recorded their song "El manisero" (The Peanut Vendor) in New York City.

[5] This single, released four months later by Victor, became a hit, becoming the first Latin song to sell 1 million copies in the United States.

[6][7] The song, composed by Moisés Simons, is a son-pregón arranged, in this case, for Azpiazú's big band featuring three saxophones, two cornets, banjo, guitar, piano, violin, bass, and trap drums.

Notable bandleaders of the rhumba craze include Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, Nathaniel Shilkret, Leo Reisman and Enric Madriguera.

[6] Rhumba was also incorporated into classical music, as exemplified by symphonic pieces by composers such as George Gershwin, Harl McDonald and Morton Gould.

It is easy to see why, for ease of reference and for marketing, rhumba is a better name, however inaccurate; it is the same kind of reason that led later on to the use of salsa as an overall term for popular music of Cuban origin.

[citation needed] All social dances in Cuba involve a hip-sway over the standing leg and, though this is scarcely noticeable in fast salsa, it is more pronounced in the slow ballroom rumba.