ETHNIC BACKGROUNDS
Another difference is the more retained – or less diluted - Amerindian, indigenous Taíno “blood” within the Dominican Republic, more rarely noticeable (safe some rural areas) within the present Cuban population, mostly ranging from – simplifyingly said – Southern European to dark-skinned Africans, and all in between.
In a very general sense, this also applies to the Dominican Republic. This also has cultural connotations, and also musical ones. As a percussionist, and being interested in Caribbean music, I am very interested in that. This is also the case, because I studied Afro-Cuban music quite a lot, in a detailed manner for my percussion playing and songs. Dominican music, however, I studied less, for some reason. I have been several times to Cuba, but never to the Dominican Republic.
I heard Dominican genres Bachata and Merengue here and there, liked some songs, but never got the same “bug” as with Cuban music, notably Son, Changui, and Rumba. That could relate to the fact that I was simply already focusing on Cuba, so could contextualize Cuban music better, with less effort than having to delve in another culture and context (the Dominican one, in this case).
In some instances, I studied some Dominican rhythms for musical and percussive variation. It did not went much further than that, however. I kept focusing more on Cuba.
LIBRARY
Having worked in/for a scholarly library with many anthropological and socio-political works about wider Caribbean history and culture, I nonetheless acquired quite some knowledge about the Dominican Republic’s history, but more so more recent history, under dictator Trujillo (1930-1961), and later political developments. Politics got overall more attention in those scholarly historical works than popular culture (though there were some interesting works about culture too), which perhaps showed an elitist bias, I guess. There was also much attention in those works to cultural policies by the ruling classes, that can be characterized as pro-white/-European, and against the African heritage. The upper class (predictably mostly more of European descent than Amerindian or African) manifested in that sense a racist, pro-European, or Spanish, culture for the country, downplaying the African heritage at most to the merely folkloric, and even that at times reluctantly.
Also dictator Trujillo, ruling from 1930 until 1961 (partly as force behind puppet presidents), and himself a light Mulatto, promoted such policies during his strict, repressive and violent regime, albeit with some contradictions. The historical animosity with the neighboring, more African/”Blacker”, Haitians was in propaganda for instance stimulated.
Among the common population of the Dominican Republic this found some resonance, though not so much. Unlike what I noticed in parts of Northwestern Europe, Latin American people do not sense so much identification with their political leaders and their policies: there was and is much more distance with the political class, to be explained by historically lacking democracy and large social inequalities.
Studies also showed that despite that Trujillo or other leading Dominican political leaders promoted animosity to Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, in many places there was Dominican-Haitian cooperation, and even family ties. The somewhat pro-Spanish biased “Latino” identity the Dominicans seemed to favour over a “Black” or “African” one – or even instead of an appropriate Mulatto one – was not so widespread among all Dominicans, many simply recognizing African contributions as well, calling themselves “mixed”, with some African contributions.
Such African contributions are found in music, including in the well-known Merengue genre, having spread internationally over time to later also compete with Cuban-based Salsa in “Latin music” circles, as well as Bachata music, developing later in the Dominican Republic (on Eastern Cuban models).
Of both Merengue and Bachata it is clear – and recognized – that it somehow reflects the different legacies of Dominican culture: the Spanish one, the African one, and the indigenous, Amerindian one, showing in instrumentation. Guitar/string instruments – and song types – reflect the Spanish heritage, the drums and rhythmic patterns (e.g. common syncopation) the African heritage, whereas the scraper and shaker instruments (Guira) are connected to the indigenous heritage. In itself an interesting “triracial” mix, not dissimilar to what recent DNA studied showed about most inhabitants of the Dominican Republic, with European, African, but also indigenous DNA (more than previously assumed).
MUSICAL DIFFERENCES
I wonder then, though, as to a degree comparable “mixtures” (Spanish-African, Amerindian instruments) are also found in Afro-Cuban music genres – with different accents -, what are the differences between the best-known Dominican genres of today, being Bachata and Merengue, with Cuban genres like (mostly) Salsa, Son, Rumba, etcetera?
The remainder of this post is about that. How different are the music genres between these different parts of the “Spanish Caribbean”, after all, not so far away from each other geographically? What explains those differences? And also, why those differences?
Where there perhaps also interactions in historical epochs, between Cuba and the Dominican Republic?
Due to my personally acquired knowledge and experience by now, my starting point and base is Afro-Cuban music, comparing Merengue, Bachata, and other Dominican genres to that what I happen to know better the history and characteristics of: Cuban music.
MERENGUE
Merengue is faster than Salsa or (other) Cuban music. I noticed that soon enough. The dance to it is also faster (and simpler). Other musical differences are that Merengue tends to be in counted in 2/4 beat/time signature (Cuban Son/Salsa 4/4, Rumba often 6/8), shared with Brazilian Samba (also 2/4). The common instruments used in traditional Merengue include the typically Dominican double-sided Tambora drum, the Guira metal scraper, and the Accordion, that at one point replaced string instruments (since the 1880s).. The Accordion play repeated syncopated patterns, rendering often a danceable, lively groove. The Guira metal scraper bears similarities to the East Cuban Guaya scraper (in Son Changui, for instance), but plays faster patterns
The Accordion is by contrast not really used in Cuban music, neither is that (Dominican) Tambora drum type found much in Cuban music (mostly open-bottom drums). Rhythmically, Merengue has similar “swaying” characteristics as found in neighboring Haiti’s music (only faster), perhaps shaped as such originally (some Haitian influence), but denied with the later mentioned Dominican-Haitian tensions that arose. There is also a Haitian genre named Méringue, which shares similarities not just in name with Dominican Merengue (see my post about Haitian music), and has not coincidentally its origins in the same 19th-c. period (around 1850).
Later, more modern Merengue versions (such as “de orquesta”, orchestra-types) added more instruments, including wind instruments (notably the saxophone), other percussion (conga’s a.o.), often with influences from other parts of the region (including Cuba), and string instruments.
Dictator Trujillo actually promoted Merengue music as national music, related to his own humble origins (like Merengue), while at the same time contradicting his anti-African heritage stances regarding other aspects of Dominican culture. He used Merengue for his propaganda, and connection to the populace.
BACHATA
Bachata is a newer genre, of more recent origin (becoming known in the Early 1960s), like Merengue hailing from Northern parts of the Dominican Republic. It is less “local” in that it is influenced from the start by Cuban Bolero and Son, with an own touch over time, but maintaining a string-instrument base, unlike Merengue. From Cuban models, it developed into an own genre over time in the Dominican Republic, including Merengue influences, and a shift to steel and electric guitars, resulting in prominent guitar patterns, mixed with varied percussion, mostly including the (originally Cuban!) Bongos, as small, high-pitched hand drums. The syncopated, rhythmic interaction between the strings and bongo (and other percussion) still reflect its origins in Cuban Bolero and Son, albeit adapted.
One difference with the Cuban models are faster, own Bongo rolls and also “fuller” and electric guitar patterns, less “spacious” than in Cuban Son. It tends to be overall faster in tempo to Cuban Son or bolero.
PALO
Palo is a semi-religious, more sacred folk music genre in the Dominican Republic with more direct African retentions, centered on (Catholic) saints or ancestors and combined drums and call-and-response vocals of African origins. The drums are three open-bottom drums as in the Congo tradition, with the low-pitched drum providing steady beats, and the other drums variations. This has superficial similarities with Afro-Cuban Rumba types, while “heart-beat” like drum base rhythms reflect a Congo heritage, also found elsewhere in the African diapora in the Americas (Haiti, Jamaica, Colombia).
The three drums combine with different instruments in different parts of the country, with the Guira scraper recurring, but in some regions of the Dominican Republic also with e.g. tambourines.
Also a difference with Cuba, where bells are used more often, as well more shaker (maraca) types. It lacks a bit that “clave” (key beats) base of Cuban music, but further has similarities. Mainly of Congo origin, the similarities could be explained by the strong Congo influence of much Afro-Cuban music, including on Son, and (partly) on Rumba, and similar genres – also named Palo – in especially Eastern Cuba. Cuban Palo uses some other patterns and instruments, though, than its Dominican namesake.
EXPLAINING THE DIFFERENCES
What I find interesting in this case, is how these differences – and similarities - between the music genres of two “Spanish Caribbean” nations, with both (in general) a mixed Spanish-African population, geographically close to each other – Cuba and the Dominican Republic – can be explained. This explanation is mostly historically, of course.
SLAVERY
More intense and longer-lasting slavery of Africans in Cuba explains some differences. The historical conflicts of the Dominican Republic with neighbouring Haiti also some. After the Haitian Revolution (up to 1804), - and in the 1820s - Haiti occupied the bordering Dominican Republic for a period, even making some Dominican leaders prefer continued Spanish colonial rule, while border disputes were also long problematic. The animosity between more European-oriented Dominicans, and more African Haitians continued for long, including racist aspects in the Dominican Republic.
This went so far that dictator Rafael Trujillo (from 1930 to 1961) hid his part-Haitian ancestry (on his mother’s side) as part of his regime’s propaganda, inventing instead a vague personal Spanish nobility origin from colonial times, and lightening his mulatto skin tone.
POPULAR LEVELS
These kinds of sentiments were mostly political, and to a lesser degree “popular”, as Afro-Dominican culture was still kept alive, albeit sometimes diluted or denied.
This was somehow different in Cuba, where “Africanness” as cultural identity was by some parts of the population proudly asserted, even though it was deemed certainly problematic by elite, pro-European circles, and seen as vulgar, in several historical epochs, even postcolonial ones, It proved, however, impossible to deny or ignore, especially as music genres like Son (from “blacker” Eastern Cuba) and Afro-Cuban Rumba gained wider popularity also in Havana.
Interestingly, in both Cuba and the Dominican Republic, “white political elite” dogmas and preferences were largely ignored, or circumvented, on the popular levels, continuing the incorporation and even celebration of African cultural retentions.
In the case of Cuba, with more slave imports, up to a later time period (even up to the 1860s), there were more maintained sensed African identities among Afro-Cubans, and more direct African cultural retentions, even of a specific ethnic nature or geographical origin (Yoruba, Congo, Calabar/Efik), including spiritual and musical aspects.
This was simply too hard to repress, although in certain epochs it had to be hidden more in Cuba. Even during Castro’s communism – frowning on Afro-Cuban “religion”, like Santería (mostly Yoruba) or Palo Mayombe (mostly Congo), the spiritual rituals continued underground.
Such African identities were more fluid and mixed – or downplayed - in the case of Afro-Dominicans, though surviving in part in Palo music (mixed with Catholicism) and subtly in musical elements of Merengue and Bachata).
It resulted – however – in less types of hand drums and other African percussion in the Dominican Republic, when compared to Cuba, though Congo-type drums are present in Palo music,. Bachata, however, adopted the Afro-Cuban Bongó. The indigenous Amerindians left their mark in both Cuban and Dominican music, mostly in instruments like the scrapers (Guiro/guira, Guaya), and in some shakers.
AFRICAN ORIGINS
While close to each other, and despite the Spanish colonial connection, some musical differences thus arose in the local contexts. The normative Accordion use in Merengue relate to German traders and travelers to the Dominican Republic, related to the tobacco trade, bringing the (after all German-invented) instrument. This did not seem to have occurred in Cuba, where the accordion remained an oddity in its folk music, if present at all. It never replaced string or other “chording”/melodic instruments in Cuba, maintaining its tres or other guitar use.
The characteristics of the Accordion made Dominican Merengue more “swaying” than Cuban “straighter” rhythms, but also the early Haitian connection of Merengue, however denied by authorities. The irony of neighboring enemies, that nonetheless share more than with others.
The bells, and clave-patterns might relate to the Yoruba influence in Cuba, as well as some other instrument uses (like the Shekere bead shaker). Africans from various nations ended up in the Dominican Republic. Christopher Columbus himself brought some from the Senegambia area around 1500 (one of the first African slave transport to the Americas), while later Congo, Dahomey/Ewe (like in Haiti), and even Ghana, became sources for slaves to the Dominican Republic.
Yoruba were less represented in the Dominican Republic, as they were enslaved and sold in a later stage in what is now Nigeria, related to the “jihad” (religious war) attacks of the Islamic Hausa invading from north of Yorubaland, enabling their capture and sale to Europeans (Portuguese, Spanish) up to the 1840s. Britain by then has (formally) abolished the slave trade, but it continued to Brazil and Spanish colonies (and illegally by Britons), but the Dominican Republic had abolished slavery already by 1822 (under Haitian influence), Cuba only as late as the 1880s, still importing slaves (also illegally) up to the 1860s.
Quite some Congo/Central African/Bantu slaves ended up in Cuba (estimated at 40% of them), which does provide a cultural link with Afro-Dominicans, though with some differences. Scholars assert that Bantu-speaking slaves in the Dominican Republic, often came from other ethnic groups in the wider Congo-Angola region than those in Cuba, besides sometimes from the same region. Still shared similarities as a cultural region, but with regional differences. Just like you have, e.g., within countries like Spain or Italy.
EUROPEANS
Regarding the Spanish, or European side, there were similarities in migration between Cuba and the Dominican Republic, such as a shared input of Canary islanders (even on the Caribbean Spanish language accent), and further Andalusian/South Spanish and Catalan influences. The Catalonian influence became stronger with the slavery peak in Cuba after 1820, as many slave owners and investors in plantations came from more wealthy and industrialized Catalonia, and other northern Spaniards (like the Basque slave-owning family Zulueta). The famous Bacardi family (from the rum) was also Catalan in origin, and were also owners of many African slaves.
Yet, sources state that among the earlier Spanish (“White”) settlers in the Dominican Republic, there were also relatively many Catalans, alongside Canarians, and others. This still reflects in Catalan surnames in present-day Dominican Republic (Bosch, Balaguer).
The South Spanish influence was still there, as what we know as the early Spanish guitar was in fact Andalusian in origin. Some Cuban music genres (like Punta) show Andalusian and Flamenco elements, while the recurring string instruments and guitar patterns show this South Spanish influence in Cuba (soon mixed with African ones), perhaps stronger than in the Dominican Republic, where guitars nonetheless were known too.
In fact, a French influence (via Haiti) might have had some effect on the European side of the mixed music in the Dominican Republic.
POLITICS
A final influence relate to political differences. Trujillo supported Merengue music for his propaganda, as pre-Castro leaders sometimes supported (selectively) Afro-Cuban aspects, despite a stronger pro-European/Spanish bias. Fidel Castro’s communism in name supported Afro-Cuban culture, yet its policies and dogmas sometimes limited it. The Marxist and Communist formal atheism was at first strongly adhered to under Castro, working also against popular Afro-Cuban faiths and folk religions like Santería, obliging practitioners even to secrecy in periods.
While music education was stimulated and is conveniently state-paid – supporting musicianship – under Cuban communism, the general cultural focus was more European/Western. This was noted also by Carlos Moore, who became a Cuban refugee and opponent of Castro, after first sympathizing and working some time for Fidel Castro. Moore - in exile - critiqued Castro’s dictatorial tendencies, but also his cultural bias and close-mindedness, restricted to Castro’s own “White”, Hispanic ethnicity. Castro was not in touch with Afro-Cuban culture, Moore argued, forming after all a substantial part of Cuban society: a majority (estimated at 80%) is at least partly of African descent, with over 25% of Cuba even mainly of African descent. Add to this around 50% of Cubans being mixed-raced.
Trujillo was unlike “Hispanic White” Fidel Castro (who was of Galician Spanish and Canarian descent), rather a light Mulatto, with some African blood, but was in denial about it, resulting in the psychological complexities and contradictions common to self-hatred and troubled identity issues. What Black Americans dubbed as the “Uncle Tom” effect. Later presidents – from 1961 to now - (often mostly White) continued the pro-European, anti-Haitian cultural focus of Dominican politics.
Like in Cuba, though, the popular culture could not be shaped or altered so easily by politicians, maintaining a strength by itself among common folk, showing in subtle yet noticeable African retentions in main Dominican genres as Merengue and Bachata (syncopation, percussion, call-and-response), and even more direct African retentions in Congo-derived Palo music in the Dominican Republic.
More recent allowance of social commentary lyrics in Merengue (also by famous Juan Luis Guerra) and Bachata (beyond romantic or party themes) affirm these genres all the more as truly nonelite and popular.
INTRA-CARIBBEAN
And yes, there were relations between the Dominican Republic and Cuba, historically (through Cuban Son and Bolero) by shaping the Bachata genre, and also on Afro-Cuban influences on later Merengue styles (“de orquesta”).
The other way around less, confirming Cuba’s special place as musical hotbed in Latin America, not unlike Jamaica for the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean. Dominican radio stations – on the other hand - reach Eastern Cuba (around Santiago de Cuba, Son’s heartland), making Bachata and Merengue songs quite popular there as well, as varying foreign influence. There are by now also Cuban artists making Bachata, like Kirenia, Michel Felix, Meyita, and Verónica Velázquez, found on a compilation “Bachata from Cuba” to be found online.
Funny how the Domincan touches that later adapted Cuban Son and Bolero (electric steel guitar, faster bongo rolls, a.o.) to form Dominican Bachata, actually came back to Cuba as well. Not the “purist” approach, let’s say, but open and creative, accepting “what they did with it”. Something comparable happened with what in New York became known as Salsa in the 1980s, but was largely Cuban Son-based.
Merengue is of course known in present-day Cuba, but as Dominican and foreign genre, and sometimes appreciated or played on the radio or in clubs (as international, foreign “Latin” hits). Yet it seemed less “absorbed” by Cuban musical artists, as few Merengue artists as such in Cuba are known (some experiment with it).
There is a traditional, percussive Haitian Merengue known with that name in Eastern Cuba, due to historical Haitian influence, but this derived from Haitian Méringue. Interestingly, yet not surprisingly, it has some rhythmic, “swaying” similarities even with modern Dominican Merengue, showing original Haitian-Dominican connections on Hispaniola, shaping Merengue.
