Professor Longhair (Henry R. Byrd), a blues pianist with a rumba beat, was given featured billing at some of the early festivals and as a result his flagging career was revived.

At the end of the set, when Papa Wemba sang his older Congolese dance tunes, with their buoyant rumba beat and gleaming guitars, the music suddenly sounded vital again.

Using another traditional rumba beat, the columbia, they sang about the Catholic saints, including Barbara and Lazarus, who are associated with the Yoruba pantheon.

They picked up the rumba beat, a two-part structure (a slow section with lyrics, followed by a faster dance section), and the use of parallel-harmony vocals, but reshaped the music with a lighter touch, moving the emphasis from percussion to melody.

"Hound Dog" originally loped to a rumba beat, but Elvis Presley's version obscured it somewhat.

He finished tuning, adjusted the rhythm box until it emitted a rumba beat, and said something unintelligible into the microphone.

One song was paced by drums and modal patterns played on a marimba; the second shifted to a rumba beat and brought in the horns.

His vision of soccer is pressure and passing, no booming kicks, no fancy dribbling, just the constant rumba beat of touch-trap-pass.

Walk the mildewed neighborhoods of Centro Habana or Vedado and you'll soon pick up the scent - here a mysterious Santería ritual, there a couple of drummers pounding out a rumba beat.

A corporal wearing an SP's armband helped her down, and from the distance she sensed the clunk and slap of a double bass and drums that tapped out a rumba beat.