Kimbumba! Background to the Story

According to conventional wisdom, people’s memories fade with age. I suppose I’m more fortunate than most because I remember everything, especially when I look at old photos that trigger my memories. It happened as I was looking through childhood snapshots. Among the black-and-white images, I came upon one that brought back pleasant and sad memories. It is a shot of my younger brother and me playing on a white sand mound near a train yard in El Central Araújo, Cuba, in the early 1950s. In that railroad yard, my brother and I saw a steam locomotive for the first time in our lives. The fond memories are of the place and time, playing in the railroad yard. Before his untimely death, my brother assisted me with the events in this book.

 At the railroad yard, we met Don Manuel, an Afro-Cuban elder who worked as a security guard. He taught us the ancient African game of Kimbumba. The game resembles a blend of cricket and baseball but is played with sticks. Don Manuel taught us the techniques and rules. He also told us about the game’s origins and the legend of Kimbu, the game’s creator. The legend has been passed down through the oral tradition to generations of young African villagers from their elders.

The game alludes to an African Congo creative past that vanished as a direct result of the slave trade’s 500-year abduction and enslavement of West Africans. Later, under the rule of Belgium’s King Leopold II, atrocities were committed against the people of the African Congo. It culminated in the Congo’s civil war in the twentieth century. These tragedies shattered the oral tradition of village elders passing down the history of the Kimbumba game and other African folklore to younger generations. As a result, the game has practically faded from the West African Congo. When it comes to preserving culture, the oral tradition is quite vulnerable.

Somehow, young people in Spain, Egypt, Israel, and India, to name a few, have played Kimbumba under various names over many years. It is not clear how the game ended up in those countries. I can only surmise that when West Africans were enslaved by Middle Eastern traders and sold in North Africa, the Middle East, and countries bordering the Arabian Sea, they introduced the game to those countries before it began to fade in western Congo.

However, the game continued to exist and lived on in the memories of younger enslaved Africans in the Caribbean as a symbol of the time they were free. As he related the oral history of his forefathers from the African Congo to their arrival in Cuba and their quest for freedom, Don Manuel recognized that his people’s history in the new world was intertwined with the history of the Spanish and European colonists. Throughout Cuba, new cultural roots were emerging. The first was a fusion of Congolese percussion music with Spanish guitar and music, and the second was the influence of African religion on Catholic traditions. A distinct Afro-Cuban culture emerged, incorporating elements of Spanish and African traditions.

It pains me to admit that Don Manuel was probably the last of his kind. Cuba’s last vestiges of African oral tradition were inadvertently eradicated by the revolution, which would not allow any history other than the narrative promoted by the state. As a result of the human rights abuses of enslavement, colonization, and revolution, the Afro-Cuban people’s culture and history were disregarded. Even so, it could not be eradicated entirely. The human urge to know about our past is intense and always finds a crack through which to emerge. In Cuba, those cracks can be found in Afro-Cuban music, in which songs about the Kimbumba game, for example, have been performed for centuries.

 In Cuba in the 1700s, Congo percussion rhythms and other African music began to blend with Spanish guitars and music. By the mid-1800s, a new type of fusion music emerged and became popular. It was known as la rumba. La rumba was a brand-new Afro-Cuban rhythm. At the beginning of the twentieth century, la rumba was well established in Cuba and began to appear in United States nightclubs. It became trendy before and after WWII, and Cuban bands played in the nightclubs of major American and European cities.

The Kimbumba game has deep roots in Afro-Cuban musical folklore. According to Don Manuel, his parents told him about a rumba song and dance called Rumba Quimbumba. The lyrics introduced the dancers to the Quimbumba game. There have been songs about the game since the mid-1800s. On Cuban radio in 1941, El Conjunto Casino[1] (a Cuban musical band) performed a new version of the old Rumba Quimbumba song. The most recent musical redo was in 2014. The Kimbumba game and songs have also been part of American films.

While researching this book, I found an old American film from 1934 called The March of the Wooden Soldiers, aka Babes in Toyland[2]. Near the beginning of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s movie, in the fourteenth minute of the film, there is a two-minute segment in which Stan shows Oliver how to play a game. The game has been a mystery for almost seventy years. Laurel referred to the game as “pee wee,” meaning the small size of the pointed stick. The film never mentioned the actual name of the game or its origins. This book identifies the game and its roots.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that a 2014 American film, Chef, featured a new Cuban song on its soundtrack that memorialized the game of La Quimbumba[3] (Kimbumba in Spanish).

It should be noted that most Spanish words with a k are borrowed from other languages. In Spanish, some foreign words with k are rendered with ‘qu,’ which is the phonetical equivalent of a k. For example, Kimbumba is a word from the African Kikongo language that translates to Quimbumba in Spanish. The African spelling of the word is used in this book.

[1] Conjunto Casino, Rumba Quimbumba, 1941–46,

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT21tDr8SII

[2]  Babes in Toyland, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1934,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giABfnfy9R0

[3] La Quimbumba, Milan Records, 2020,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsGnCPVOdPE