By Elena Voss
Photography by Marcus Chen
Posted: May 11, 2024 | Takotna, Alaska
On a February evening in Takotna, Alaska—population 52—half the town gathered in the community center to practice cumbia, a coastal Colombian dance born from the collision of African drumming, indigenous gaita flutes, and European accordion. The thermometer outside read 14 below.
In a town with no dance studio and no direct flights to Latin America, the weekly class has become something few here expected: a gathering place.
The Birth of a Movement
The class began in January 2023, when Maria Rodriguez, 34, a Takotna elementary school teacher, returned from a three-week trip to Cartagena, Colombia. She had booked the trip to visit a college friend; she returned with playlists, YouTube tutorials, and a mission.
"I couldn't stop moving to it," Rodriguez told The Arctic Review in an interview last month. "I thought, well, if I love this, maybe someone else here will too."
She posted a flyer at the Takotna Community Center. Twelve people showed up to the first class. Within two months, attendance had doubled. On warm evenings—relative to the season—participants have carried portable speakers outside to practice the dance's signature shuffled step on the packed snow.
What Is Cumbia?
To the uninitiated, cumbia announces itself first by rhythm: a loping, circular beat driven by tambor drums, layered with the reedy cry of the gaita and the bright push of the accordion. The dance form matches the music in its accessibility. Partners stand close, hips relaxed, feet tracing small, dragging steps that mimic the movement of enslaved Africans who, legend holds, once danced in chains along Colombia's Caribbean coast.
Today, cumbia functions as both national folklore and social glue across Latin America, with regional variations in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. In Colombia, it remains a staple of weddings, street festivals, and family gatherings.
A Cultural Tapestry
Takotna's class reflects the dance's history of absorption and adaptation. Among the regulars are Dena'ina Athabascan elders, Mexican immigrants who came north for fishing work, white settlers whose families have lived here since the 1960s, and a Venezuelan couple who relocated in 2021.
Juan Carlos Ríos, 41, who works at the regional air taxi service, now leads the music curation. He grew up hearing cumbia at family parties in Mérida, Venezuela. "Here, you don't expect to find this," Ríos said. "But when the accordion starts, I feel like I'm back on my grandmother's patio."
Building Bridges Through Dance
The social effect has been tangible. Two Dena'ina women in their sixties, who told Rodriguez they had never previously attended events at the community center, now arrive early to help set up folding chairs. A longtime resident who had clashed with the borough council over zoning said he and a Mexican classmate had finally spoken civilly for the first time in years.
For some participants, the class has become their primary social outing across Takotna's longtime geographic and occupational divides.
A Festival on the Horizon
Rodriguez and three other regulars have applied for a Northwest Arctic Borough grant to host a one-day cumbia festival in August, she said. The proposal, submitted in March, seeks $8,500 for a portable dance floor, sound equipment, and a performance by Son del Carib, an Anchorage-based band with Colombian and Mexican members. If approved, the festival would include workshops on cumbia's Afro-Colombian roots and a community potluck.
No word yet from the borough. But Rodriguez remains optimistic.
"We're asking to throw a party in a town that didn't know this music two years ago," she said. "That's a strange thing. But strange things can work here."
Elena Voss covers rural Alaska and Arctic culture for The Arctic Review. Follow her on Twitter at @elenavossak.
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