Dominican Dance and Music: Moving to the Music

Dance is a social ritual from an early age 

Dominican dance and music are intimately tied together. Below are a few common types of music and dance ranging from early to modern Dominican society.

Areíto Taíno:

An indigenous form of music and dance used to transmit Taíno history orally and visually through words, movements, and melodies. The themes of the songs varied greatly from the amorous, to bellicose, to religious. Instruments used included maracas made of gourds (higüeros), tamboras made from hollowed out trunks, and flutes made of sugar cane or bones, accompanied by the percussion of shells adorning the dancers. This art form was particularly important in the transmission of culture and history from generation to generation, as the Taínos did not have a written language.

Merengue

Playing the guira

Merengue generally involves the accordion, bass guitar, güira (a metal percussion instrument resembling a cheese grater that is played by rubbing a wire comb against its jagged surface), guitar, tambora (a two-sided drum laid across the lap and played with a stick on one side and the hand on the other), and brass instruments including the saxophone and trumpet. Merengue is danced on a two-four beat, to which dancers’ hips tend to move in a fluid figure eight. This motion has also been compared to that of an eggbeater, which may have given rise to the music’s name meaning meringue, whose stiff peaks are the results of an eggbeater’s frenzied motion.

Merengue Típico or Perico Ripiao

Dance spans all age ranges in the DR

Merengue típico and perico ripiao are nearly interchangeable terms that refer to an up-tempo, more instrumental version of merengue popularized in rural communities of the Cibao in the late 19th century, as probably the oldest kind of merengue. Típico bands use a guitar, guira, tambora drum, accordion, and, more recently, saxophone, and the related dance can be similarly faster and with more movement than other slower merengue songs.

Bachata

From the same influences that merengue arose came bachata, which employs a lead guitar, rhythm guitar, electric bass guitar, bongos, and güira. It has a four-count rhythm characterized by an upward flick of the hips on the fourth beat, almost as if a puppeteer’s string was plucking them in the air.

Dominican Music: Merengue and Bachata

Rinconcito: Sunday night dancing in la Zona Colonial

A combination of traditional, European, and African music and dance, merengue and bachata grew up in the countryside of the Dominican Republic. Though heavily European-influenced music dominated the popular music scene throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, Dominican musicians began to incorporate the countryside’s staccato and organic rhythms such as zapateo, sarambo, and mangulina. When European immigrants brought the accordion in 1870, merengue started to rise from the heady fusion that had been simmering.

Merengue hit the big stage in the early 1900s, as it started to become accepted by the Dominican upper classes, especially after Trujillo decided to use merengue in his campaigns. Merengue legends include Toño Rosario & Los Hermanos Rosario, Sergio Vargas, and Johnny Ventura – all of which are part of the “Golden Years” of merengue in the 1980s.

Breaking down a merengue classic

Developed during the early 20th century, bachata was not embraced by Trujillo or the wealthy and was not even recorded until 1961. With rural influences both lyrically and musically, bachata continued to be looked down upon by the mainstream until the 1980s when established artists – such as Luis Segura, El Chivo Sin Ley (Ramoncito Cabrera), and Antonio Gómez Salcero – were able to reach larger audiences.

Showing those drums no mercy

Grammy-award winning Juan Luis Guerra was the first to sneak bachata into the musical repertoire of the upper-middle class with his smooth renditions sometimes confused for merengue. Aventura, a New York-based pop bachata sensation, catapulted bachata onto the iPods and into the hearts of fans across the world by performing across the US. Other popular bachata artists include Anthony Santos, Zacarias Ferreira, and Frank Reyes.

Dominican Music and Dance: Introduction

 

It is impossible to speak about Dominican music without discussing dance; they are seamlessly intertwined with each other. The two developed alongside one another, drawing from the same Taíno, European, and African influences and roots. Over the next several weeks, we’ll go  into detail about several types and style of music and dance.

 



Merengue dancing

Few records remain of early colonial culture, but music was a pastime among slaves and free mulattoes, who blended vestiges of Taino culture, African rhythms brought by slaves in the 16th century, and the melodies of European string instruments. It was not until the mid-19th century that the first true Dominican musical institutions,  especially merengue, began to take shape. Today, the scene is broad and diverse, as the airwaves and the Internet bring notes and moves to the island, and bands like Aventura introduce Dominican song and dance to the rest of the world.  Partner up!