Thedembowbeat ordembow riddim is a musical rhythm best known for its use as the core percussion element inreggaeton music, having taken its name from the 1990dancehall song "Dem Bow" byShabba Ranks. The rhythm, first developed by Jamaican and Afro-Panamanian producers in the early 1990s[1] as reggaeton was beginning to form, employs thetresillo pattern that is common inLatin American music.
The dembow rhythm is usually employed as aloop, in line with reggaeton's mainly electronic production. Described as having a "bounce", it has a 3+3+2 (tresillo)cross-rhythm with a slightsyncopation on every other half-beat.[2]
While dembow is the main building block of the reggaeton genre, similar modern rhythms can be found inAfrica with the genres ofafrobeats, on account of their common ancestry. There are also connections withArabic music, credited to "cross-pollination" betweenSpain, theArab world, andsub-Saharan Africa.[2][3]
At the beginning of the 1990s, there existed several closely related Jamaican-origin dancehallriddims revolving around a "boom-ch-boom-chick" sound such as the "Bam Bam riddim" or the "Fever Pitch riddim". Added to this group was the beat of Shabba Ranks' song "Dem Bow", which became known as the "Dem Bow riddim".[1][4] The song's popularity resulted in the adoption of the "dem bow" name to describe the entire nascent genre that would eventually come to be known as reggaeton.[5][1]
The term "dembow" today commonly refers simply to the drum beat of reggaeton, which, while retaining its core "boom-ch-boom-chick" sound, has stylistic variations.[1]
