timba

American  

[teem-buh] / ˈtim bə /

noun

timbas plural

1. a genre of Cuban dance music with fast, complex rhythms, influenced by salsa, son cubano, Afro-Cuban folk music, and American R&B and funk.

2. a long, tapered hand drum used in many genres of Latin American music.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• timbas
  plural

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

timba

Both 72, they call the event Los Tradicionales — “the traditional ones” — because their goal is to help preserve Cuba’s rich dance heritage, from rumba to timba to casino, an ancestor of salsa.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2026

Born in Cuba’s working-class neighborhoods — known colloquially as repartos — this hyperkinetic fusion of reggaetón, timba and Afro-Cuban rhythms has become the island’s score.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2025

To help organise the concert, they called on the help of timba star Isaac Delgado.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 25, 2016

The band was a forerunner of timba, the still-popular Cuban dance music that blends rumba, guaguancó and other folkloric styles with elements of jazz, rock, funk and classical music.

From New York Times ● Nov. 1, 2015

This contrivance is called by the natives timba.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 10 of 55 1597-1599 Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century by Robertson, James Alexander