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The Dominican
Carnival has had a great tradition since its beginnings
during colonial times, when the citizens of Santo
Domingo would dress up on the eve of Christian
Lent in order to celebrate their religious beliefs.
Although costumes
and music were around since the 16th century,
the Carnival became even more popular after the
patriotic victory of February 27, 1844 the day
when the Dominican Republic gained its independence.
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The
Dominican Carnival is one of the most colorful
traditions and more cheerful festivities in the
Dominican Republic, where all of the Dominican
people come together in the city streets to dance,
share and delight in a celebration of joy.
The apex of
the experience takes place during the final days
of February, although it is celebrated on every
weekend of February and, in some case, until the
beginning of March.There are other dates on which
certain towns celebrate other carnivals, but none
match the intensity, enthusiasm and creativity
that have become the cornerstones of the February
Carnival that is loved by the entire nation.
One of the
main Carnival tradition involves the attires and
costumes worn by those who celebrate it; a varied
hybrid from region to region that mixes elements
of African tradition and European styled fabrics.
The most popular costume, known as the diablo
cojuelo, consists of a brightly colored layered
suit covered with small mirrors and bells and
worn with a devil mask, usually with many horns
and teeth. |
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Merengue:
The Dance
The merengue is an extremely accessible dance,
mainly because the level of co-ordination between
legs and arms is less crucial to beginner dancers
than, for example, in salsa. This fact is greatly
responsible for the rapid uptake of the merengue
as a dance worldwide. People can, with little
or no instruction, merengue straight away. Ladies
in particular can learn to dance it very quickly,
so long as they receive a good lead. In many places,
instructors tend to teach off the merengue into
salsa by introducing the armwork in the merengue
and fitting the footwork later in salsa. This
is a little unfair to the merengue, since learning
dancers tend perceive the merengue as a poor person's
salsa, instead of being a rich dance form in its
own right. |
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Merengue
as a music (and dance) form, is most strongly
identified with the Dominican Republic. Its spread
has been aided, in part, by the large numbers
of Dominicans immigrating to the United States,
bringing the merengue with them. The merengue,
like salsa, is now recognised as a transnational
phenomenon, spanning an increasing number of countries
in an ever-shrinking globe. As of this writing,
merengue outsells salsa by more than four to one
in Latin America.
History
of Merengue
What is not commonly known is that there are several
kinds of merengue in the Dominican Republic alone,
and there have been forms of the merengue indigenous
to other Latin American countries, some of which
have become extinct. The form of the merengue
that we are most familiar with originates from
the El Cibao region of the Dominican Republic
and is called Merengue Cibaeño. It was
considered by some to be the music of the underclasses,
a little like what bachata is now. The merengue's
rise to prominence and acceptance by all classes
was stimulated by two key events. The first was
its role in maintaining Dominican cultural identity
from the time when the United States took over
the running of the Dominican Republic's customs
house in 1905, which had great repercussions on
national sentiment. The second was the adoption
of the merengue as a national symbol by the dictator
Rafael Trujillo. These factors are largely responsible
for the dominant portrayal of the Dominican Republic
as the home of the merengue. |
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The
music that today is called bachata emerged from
and belongs to a long-standin Pan-Latin American
tradition of guitar music, música de guitarra,
which was typically played by trios or quartets
comprised of one or two guitars (or other related
stringed instrument such as the smaller requito),
with percussion provided by maracas and/or other
instruments such as claves (hardwood sticks used
for percussion), bongo drums, or a gourd güiro
scraper. Sometimes a large thumb bass called marimba
or marimbula was included as well. When bachata
emerged in the early 1960s, it was part of an
important subcategory of guitar music, romantic
guitar music -as distinguished from guitar music
intended primarily for dancing such as th Cuban
son or guaracha- although in later decades, as
musicians began speeding up the rhythm and dancers
developed a new dance step, bachata began to be
considered dance music as well. The most popular
and widespread genre of romantic guitar music
in this century, and the most influential for
the development of bachata, was the Cuban bolero
(not to be confused with the unrelated Spanish
bolero). Bachata musicians, however, also drew
upon other genres of música de guitarra
that accomplished guitarists would be familiar
with, including Mexican rancheros and corridos,
Cuban son, guaracha and guajira, Puerto Rican
plena and jibaro music, and the Colombian-Ecuadorian
vals campesino and pasillo- as well as the Dominican
merengue, which was originally guitar-based.
Before the
development of a Dominican redording industry
and the spread of the mass media, guitar-based
trios and quartets were almost indispensable for
a variety of informal recreational events such
as Sunday afternoon parties known as pasadías
and spontaneous gatherings that took place in
back yards, living rooms, or in the street that
were known as bachatas. Dictionaries of Latin
American Spanish define the term bachata as juerga,
jolgorio, or parranda, all of which denote fun,
merriment, a good time, or a spree, but in the
Dominican Republic, in addition to the emotional
quality of fun and enjoyment suggested by the
dictionary definition, it referred specifically
to get-togethers that included music, drink, and
food. The musicians who played at bachatas were
usually local, friends an neighbors of the host,
although sometimes reputed musicians from farther
away might be brought in for a special occacion.
Musicians were normally recompensed only with
food and drink, but a little money might be given
as well. Parties were usually held on Saturday
night and would go on until dawn, at which time
a traditional soup, the sancocho, was served to
the remaining guests. Because the music played
at htese gatherings was so often played on guitars
(although accordio-based ensembles were also common),
the guitar-based music recorded in the 1960s and
1970s by musicians of rural origins came to be
known as bachata.
The word bachata
also had certain associations, upper-class parties
would never be called bachatas. In his book Al
amor del bohío (1927), Ramón Emilio
Jiménez, a distinguished Dominican "man
of leters" and "writer of manners," described
a bachata in terms that reflect how such gatherings
were associated by the elite with low-class debauchery
and dissipation:
The "bachata"
is a center of attraction for all the men, where
the social classes ao those who attend them are
leveled and where the coarsest and libertarian
forms of democracy predominate. The most elegant
figures of the barrio are there, daring and audacious.
The setting of these dissolute pleasures is a
small living room impregnated by odors that seem
conjured to challenge decency....In an adjoining
room a guitarist plucks and unleashes into the
contaminated air of the house (a) blazing street-level
couplet, to which a singer with a well-established
reputation as a "second" makes a duo, provisioned
with a pair of spoons which he strikes to accompany
the melody.
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Among Dominicans
there is considerable disagreement as to exactly
when the term bachata come to refer to a particular
kind of music. In the absence of any systematic
research into the subject, there is a tendency
for people to rely on their own memories, which
vary according to their age, class, and where
they grew up. According to bachata musicians themselves,
it was in the 1970s that the guitar-based music
they recorded came to be identified by the term
bachata, which by then had lost its more neutral
connotation of an informal (if rowdy) backyard
party and acquired an unmistakably negative cultural
value implying rural backwardness and vulgarity.
For example on hearing one of these recordings,
a middle- or upper-class person might say something
like "¡Quítate esa bachat!" (Take
that bachata off!). By using the term in this
way, a style of guitar music made by poor rural
musicians come to be synonymous with low quality.
The condemnation fell not only upon the music
and its performers, but upon its listeners as
well; the term bachatero, used for anyone who
liked the music as weel as for musicians, was
equally derogatory.
In the late
1970s and 1980s, the worsening social and economic
conditions of bachata's urban and rural poor constituency
were clearly reflected in bachata. The intrumentation
remained the same, but the tempo had become noticeably
faster, and the formerly ultra-romantic lyrics
inspired by the bolero became more and more concerned
with drinking, womanizing, and male braggadocio,
and increasingly, it began to express desprecio
(disparagement) toward women. As bachata's popularity
with the country's poorest citizens grew, the
term bachata, which earlier had suggested rural
backwardness and low social status, became loaded
with a more complicated set of socially unacceptable
features that included illicit sex, violence,
heavy alcohol use, and disreputable social contexts
such as seedy bars and brothels.
Untill recently,
bachata was a musical pariah in its country of
origin, the Dominican Republic. Since its emergence
in the early 1960s, bachata, closely associated
with poor rural migrants residing in urban shantytowns,
was considered too crude, too vulgar, and too
musically rustic to be allowed entrance into the
mainstream musical landscape. As recently as 1988,
no matter how many copies a bachata record may
have sold -and some bachata hits sold far more
than most records by socially acceptable merengue
orquestas- no bachata record ever appeared on
a published hit parade list, received airplay
on FM radio stations in the country's capital
Santo Domingo, or were sold in the principal record
stores. Bachata musicians appeared only rarely
on television, and they performed only in working-class
clubs in the capital. In contrast, even second
rate merengue orquestas were given lavish publicity
and promotion, and they entertained at posh private
clubs and nightclubs.
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The family
will gather around the table to shareLa Bandera
Dominicana (the Dominican flag), our typical lunch.
This consists of a combination of rice, beans,
meat (or seafood) and salad or a side dish, and
when prepared correctly, it becomes a meal that
includes all food groups. The fresh ingredients
provide for a meal that is not only delicious
but also healthy and nutritious. Accompany your
lunch with a glass of ice water and end it with
dessert, followed by a cup of coffee (un cafecito).
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Dominican
cuisine is easy and spontaneous. As in any other
part of the world, recipes are passed down from
generation to generation in the kitchen of our
Grandmas, Aunties and Moms. Because the recipes
are not always written down, we learn how to cook
our vernacular dishes, yet we could hardly tell
how much of "this" or what proportion
of "that" is needed.
Breakfast for Dominicans is usually a light meal;
the same dishes prepared for dinner are also prepared
for breakfast, especially when one needs a hearty
start to the day. A typical Dominican breakfast
could consist of mangú accompanied by scrambled
eggs and topped with sautéed onions. A
few pieces of boiled cassava or another root is
a good substitute for the mangú. This can
also be accompanied by a few slices of deep fried
Dominican cheese (its consistency and taste similar
to that of Feta cheese, but is made of cow's milk).
You may also accompany it with a couple of slices
of deep-fried salami. A cup of cocoa, or coffee
with milk is a suitable ending to this breakfast.
La comida (lunch) is
the most important meal in the Dominican Republic.
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