Definition of "cumbia" []

• A Latin-American dance originating among African slave populations on Colombia's Atlantic coast and characterized by short sliding steps. (noun)
• Music for this dance. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""Walk down one block, and there's a West African beat, a Latin American cumbia, and a Brazilian samba."
• ""Fuerte Apache" because it was reminiscent of Wild West movies, daily life in there is pretty much like an episode of The Wire; and yet young talent often emerges from within, and bands describe the reality with a hybrid of local musical style cumbia and rap, now known as cumbia villera."
• "But these guys have been putting together some seriously swinging cumbia with Andean flavor, known as cumbia vilera, for the better part of the decade."