Rumba flamenca

Rumba flamenca is a palo of flamenco that developed in Andalusia through contact with Afro-Cuban music, above all the Cuban rumba and guaracha carried back across the Atlantic in the nineteenth century; it belongs to the cantes de ida y vuelta, the 'round-trip songs'. Set in a lively 4/4 rather than flamenco's twelve-beat cycles, it is played with a distinctive strummed guitar pattern, palmas handclaps and, in modern practice, the cajón. Lighter and more festive than the cante jondo palos, it became flamenco's most popular export, from Catalan rumba to the international rumba-pop of the *Gipsy Kings*.