I think the pro's balance out that aspect and makes for a pretty enjoyable arrangement."
I think the adaptation and the interpretation are enough to bring this up to the front page for me, though I can understand if some people will feel it's too static. I feel like adding tons of melodic content would break the illusion a bit for me, so what's there is enough.
It does make the arrangement as a whole feel a bit static, as that's the nature of these rhythms that are meant for people to dance, but there's enough melodic content to make up for it. So that being said I think you nailed the cumbia rhythm pretty closely, with all the right tambora and guarachaca (or guira) beats. One of my pet peeves is that when someone tries to make a remix labeling it as salsa, cumbia or any other latin american genre, then they add some rhythm that's nothing like the real thing, but that would pass as one of those genres to a casual listener from outside LAN. "Ah Latin American music, something I am very familiar with.
Sir_NutS has a bit more background, and weighs in: Thankfully we've since been graced with far, far better work than my feeble foray, and I'd include this mix of Daniel's in such good company. My own Rolling Thunder mix was an early, well-intentioned, poorly-executed, and inanely-titled attempt to get the ball. Very transformative, still recognizable, and I love the genre - I'm not knowledgeable enough to fully grok all the influences blending together, but I have a general affinity for Latin, South American, & Carribean music and have always wanted to see their rhythms, palettes, and energy represented more on OCR. Hopefully, it meets the OCR criteria, as this music style should become more known outside of Colombia and is very near and dear to me." I've worked on this mix for a better part of the year since it is very tough to find a balance between keeping it fresh but not wandering from the motif too far, since I felt that that would stray too far from the style I was going for working with percussion loops rather than the instruments individually also played a factor. Dragon Roost Island's theme felt very natural due to its very Andean style, because its chord progression was ripe for translating to the I-V-I progression used in songs like "El Pesebre" and " Danza de los Mirlos," which is evident most in the bass guitar for that style of music. I ended up choosing "Dragon Roost Island" as the song to mix. I am a huge fan of this type of music and wanted to try my hand at making something in its style myself. Having grown up listening to them around Christmas time, I was hooked on their music once I finally found out more about them and the rest of their music. A good example for this style of music from them is " El Pesebre," which is a very common song to hear in the Antioquia region of Colombia during Christmas. This one, I wanted to make a remix in the same style of Afrosound, a Colombian instrumental band who combined electric guitar sound with traditional Andean music in the 1970s that has been described as having a hybrid cumbia sound. "Another one of my covers that I have been sitting on for a while. Furorezu) takes Link to South America for a blend of electric guitar & traditional music: