Words by Mauro Ferreiro & Justin Turford
The mighty Swiss label Bongo Joe has finally touched down in the Latin Caribbean with this well-overdue look at the Dominican Republic’s musical heritage. Belgian vinyl freak and longtime DR visitor Xavier Daive AKA Funky Bompa has dug extremely deep to bring us this excellent compilation of frenetic, wildly exuberant, accordion-heavy merengue típico from its post-dictatorship revival period. Twenty years of searching for original 45s and information at the source has delivered a treasure trove of hyperspeed guira-scraping, finger-blurring merengue that fizzes with relentless party-starting energy.
Even though merengue pre-dates the arrival of the German traders and their cache of accordions, it was the arrival of this versatile instrument in the late 19th Century that supercharged the birth of ‘merengue típico’ as it travelled from village to village. As Mauro says later in this piece, the rural working classes love of the music was exploited by the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930-61), the music and the best of the merengueros were held up as examples of national pride, their fall from grace and the music’s (wrongly) perceived counter-revolutionary stance no longer celebrated when Trujillo was finally assassinated. The tragedy of this scenario was that the original merengueros hardly lived the lives of successful musicians yet the style's misuse as a propaganda tool by the blood-soaked establishment had tainted its artistry and the musicians themselves were cast asunder.
It was do or die for the music at this point but luckily Domingo Garcia Henríquez AKA ‘Tatico’, was on hand to shake it all up. Well actually, to speed it all up! It took some time before his new ‘macho’, hard-playing style would catch on but his late 60s band Tatico y sus muchachos hit the spot and he became a huge success, this sonically angrier and edgier take on the genre influencing the musicians (and many not included) that you can hear on this record. Male-dominated, the scene still managed to pop up some female energy, however, and included here is Fefita La Grande’s feisty “Caña Brava”. An absolute beast of a performance, her vocals and accordion playing explode with character and energy, this pioneering icon who still performs at 80 years old under the La Mayimba name, an anomaly in this macho world perhaps but more than worthy to be the first single from the album.
We asked our good friend and DR native Mauro Ferreiro for his thoughts, and his thoughts, as expected, are very good…
“Memory is the most malleable thing...
One is engulfed with the sounds of a time between a rock and a hard place when listening to "Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación!" a superb compilation on the mythical Bongo Joe Records.
These compositions offer a glimpse into a chapter of Dominican history that evokes many memories, similar to those of the London Blitz, for those who lived here in the 1960's: civil war, American invasion, spy cells from Cuba, and a cultural imagination torn between the 14th of June Revolutionary Movement and the nostalgia for the dictatorial old guard. My grandmother likes to recount the tale of “El Polvorín," when the constitutionalists bombed the National Army barracks where her newborn daughter was taking refuge as she was sick in the hospital. An act of retaliation towards the American-backed loyalists, this event perfectly abridges the fragmented nature of this history.
Unknown to most, this country was founded by core members of the freemasonry movement of 19th-century Latin America, a movement that inspired many great thinkers like Simón Bolivar and José de San Martín to conspire against the tyranny of their monarchical forefathers. Fundamental to this noble cause were the concepts of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a masonic devise adopted by the French Revolution and later adopted by the secret society “La Trinitaria,” which created the Dominican Republic. It later permeates the thinking of the political class, which suffered much instability after independence, until the Trujillo regime rehashes it into “Integrity, Liberty, Duty"—a small semantic difference that changes its focus from the ambitions of intellectual revolutionaries to the grievances of the rural peasantry.
Grasping this idea gives sense to the origins of this music, which develops from farmer families transitioning towards agrarian reform, state-sponsored economic expansion, and a time of vast social repression. A paradox can be observed as the regime starts to gift these communities free land (in order to win their support and increase agricultural production) while excluding them from the upper cultural echelons of Dominican society. The performance of this music becomes reserved purely for propaganda purposes and is, even nowadays, used ad hoc to invigorate a sense of national pride in the masses.
After the dictatorship was dissolved in 1961, the “new generation” of merengue music emerged during an era of political chaos and socioeconomic reconstruction. As Xavier Davie well points out, the evolution from the grandiosity of the “Típico” sound, much loved in the upper ranks of the dictatorship, to an autonomously organized musical expression by the working class and for the working class is a real cultural example of the same political transformation the Dominican Republic was going through during and after the 1965 Civil War. The feeling of being “criollo,” something influenced by many cultural references from various geographical denominations (Santo Domingo was the biggest port city in the Americas for over 300 years—there is much historical evidence of Catholic Afro-European “mestizo” families as early as the late 16th century), is then cemented as a matter of national identity. In tandem with the expansion and unionization of the rural sector, this sense of belonging transcends social barriers and becomes part of the Dominican mainstream.
But these songs have little to do with politics. Rather, they are exposés of life in the rural countryside. Some of the tracks on the compilation, such as “La negra” and “Por la mañanita,” are all about finding the right girl by the hill. “Cuando baje de la loma” talks about making some honest money during the week so we can go party on Friday night. Musical themes are almost always universal, and this is no exception. But the historical background gives it a deeper meaning; in such a historical context, where culture was often influenced by a politically motivated bourgeoisie, the music of the Dominican Republic rejected this and instead opted for remaining as close as possible to tradition. Even when the political class used it for purposes of nationalistic messaging, the essence remained untouched.
I could not even begin to do justice, in such a short article, to the brilliant ethnomusicological research conducted by Xavier Davie. The release booklet included with "Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación!" provides an incredible exposé of the musical intricacies in the performances, the instruments, the musical metrics, and all of the technical beauties in the tracks featured. If you are interested in this level of depth, I highly suggest you go check it out. In any case, the music speaks for itself.”
Mauro Ferreiro is a producer and writer from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Follow on Instagram @mauroferreiro
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