Suppressed and Marginalised for Years, Dominican Bachata Music Counters Bitter Stories with the Sweetest of Melodies

° BACHATA ° BittersweetWORDS NED SUBLETTE • PHOTOS (UNLESS STATED) NED SUBLETTE AND BENJAMIN DE MENIL Suppressed and marginalised for years, Dominican bachata music counters bitter stories with the sweetest of melodies oan Soriano, ‘El Duque de la Bachata’ (the Duke of Bachata) is not a rich man. That’s how he prefers to explain it, anyway. His house in Villa Mella, the historic black district to the north of JSanto Domingo, has no running water or indoor plumbing. His roof is a slope of corrugated tin that doesn’t join the top of the walls but sits over them on beams. He gives you the neighbour’s phone number because he doesn’t have one. At night the bumpy, pitted streets have no lights except from the houses. The electricity goes out a lot. When it rains Benjamin de Menil has other options in life. He it’s a mess. doesn’t have to be here sleeping under a mosquito Still, 36-year-old Joan (pronounced ‘yo-an’) net in Soriano’s front room for three weeks, bathing Soriano doesn’t call himself poor, though he will tell out back with a bucket and a cup, humping water you that he grew up poor. The seventh of 15 from the cistern when the barrel goes empty. But children, he’s doing better than his parents did. He he’s going with the Villa Mella flow, not for the first makes his living singing and playing bachata, the time, while he produces Soriano’s record. most popular music in the Dominican Republic. At a time when it seems to make no commercial “I barely had a childhood,” he says. “I never had sense to start a record company, de Menil started time to play, because when I finished working in the iASO Records. iASO’s latest release, Bachata Roja conuco [family farm plot] with my papá I had to go (reviewed in #51), is a certifiable five-star classic – a sell things so I could buy my clothes. I started out as compilation of landmark bachata 45s from the 60s, With his guitar slung around his shoulders, a bootblack. I sold peanuts in the street and lottery 70s and 80s. These low-fi sides cost only a few sporting jet-black hair with a white shock in front, tickets.” Leaving school in the sixth grade, he pesos each to make, but they all passed the jukebox Edilio Paredes flashes a charismatic grin as he kicks migrated from the country to Villa Mella by test of immortality. off the band at 27 de Febrero, a Dominican himself, staying with an uncle. He lasted four days De Menil, 33, lives in New York and has been restaurant in upper Manhattan, New York. working in a car wash before deciding definitively working with Dominican music for eight years. “I Now 63, Edilio’s at the height of his powers. to devote himself to bachata, chopping chords think I’m starting to understand the nuances,” he More than anyone else, he was responsible for instead of weeds and singing songs of amargue says modestly. He can’t wave a magic wand and give establishing bachata’s lead guitar style (known as (bitterness) instead of feeling bitter. Soriano a better life. It doesn’t work like that. But he requinto), plus he’s a hell of an accordionist. When It’s a story as old as the guitar, which has been can put a record out, bring Soriano to an he started out, 45 years ago, his guitar was strung played by black people in Santo Domingo since international stage, and try to get people to hear with nylon fishing line. On the 60s records, the bass before the guitar had six strings. him. Right now, de Menil’s and Soriano’s missions was homemade. coincide. Edilio lives in New York, but he’s often in Villa Mella, at his son David’s place. Audio Twins, David’s recording studio (named for Edilio’s two impossibly adorable identical nine-year-old computer-savvy grandsons), is the heart of the spacious complex where David lives with his family. There’s a huge-screen TV, internet connection and a fully equipped kitchen – all of it behind tall iron gates with a 24-hour watchman. It’s a short drive from Soriano’s house. Bachata is a way to get from where Joan Soriano is to where David Paredes is. » June 2008 Songlines 37 ° BACHATA ° ° BACHATA ° This page: Ramón Cabrera, aka ‘El Chivo Sin Ley’ – The Lawless Goat. Opposite, clockwise from top left: Joan Soriano, Ramón Cordero and Edilio Paredes; Soriano in the studio; a bachata jukebox; record store; a güira (metal scraper) NDEZ A CINI HERN PA H A DEBOR It’s no coincidence that the bachata movement began in 1962, the year after Trujillo was assassinated. Trujillo was quite possibly the worst Latin American dictator of the 20th century In the Audio Twins control room, David Dominicans got a late start in the music censored from the media,” says de Menil, “the Paredes plays us a new track by his father’s business. The 1965 invasion of the country music itself became completely uncensored.” longtime colleague Ramón Cabrera, better by the US further complicated things. Bachata lyrics, often dealing bluntly with known as ‘El Chivo Sin Ley’ (The Lawless When the guitar troubadours at last began drunkenness and sexual pleasure, as well as Goat). In his characteristic country llanto to be heard, their music was most often romantic themes, expressed the frustrations (nasal cry), ‘The Goat’ sings a darkly comic simply called música de guitarra and it owed of a class of shantytown dwellers who had song about a man who realises to his dismay much to the bolero, the pan-Latin romantic been forced to move from a hopeless life in that his new girlfriend is the recent ex-mujer of ballad. The only radio station that played it the country to a difficult life in the city. a guardia (the ex of a policeman). No one was La Guarachita, established in 1965 by the The essential quality of bachata is amargue needs to decode it here, but this song obviously miserly Rhadamés Aracena, who recorded – literally, bitterness, but it can be a nostalgic, goes back to the regime of Rafael Trujillo, the singers in his studio at home and sold the melancholic pain that makes you feel better, when you could be tortured and killed for less. records in his own store, paying artists a very like the blues (though the music is very It’s no coincidence that the bachata small flat fee per side. Soriano was a studio different), or what the Portuguese call movement began in 1962, the year after musician in Aracena’s later years, and he saudade. The use of the word ‘amargue’ in Trujillo was assassinated. Trujillo, who ruled recalls that no matter how many hours you bachata goes back at least to 1982, when the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 spent in there, you would never get anything Edilio and his brother Nelson, along with El (with US support) was, despite serious to eat. Musicians would play while almost Chivo Sin Ley, the piercing-voiced Ramón competition for the title, quite possibly the ‘The dictatingest dicator who fainting from hunger. Cordero, and others started a revue on their ever dictated’ – Junot Díaz’s worst Latin American dictator of the 20th description of Rafael Trujillo, The decadence, as Edilio Paredes called it, night off from playing in the classy Ciudad from his Pulitzer prize century – in Dominican-American novelist winning novel The Brief of the Dominican media’s attitude towards Nueva district. Hoping to put a new face on Junot Díaz’s words : ‘the dictatingest dictator Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao música de guitarra began in the early 70s, this underdog movement, they called it who ever dictated.’ Trujillo was, however, a after a denunciation of the music by an ‘Lunes de Amargue’ (Monday Night merengue fan. Renaming Luis Alberti’s influential TV host. By then bachata – a Bitterness) and it took off. group the Orquesta Generalísimo Trujillo, word that meant a lower-class party – was The bachata movement underwent a he effectively established a musical being applied to this style of guitar music, series of transformations in the 80s, most monoculture of merengue in the country but not in a complimentary way. “Better they notably when singer Blas Durán added an – moreover, one style of merengue, from called you a thief than a bachatero!” recalls electric guitarist to his group and brought in the Cibao region, preferably with high- Paredes, still wincing at the memory. For the güira (metal scraper) from merengue. But class jazz band instrumentation, or with many years bachata was simply prohibited as the watershed moment for worldwide the traditional accordion. But not with a matter of programming policy by radio and awareness of bachata wasn’t from a career guitars. Meanwhile, his regime pretty TV and even record stores refused to carry bachatero at all: Juan Luis Guerra’s sugary much prevented any kind of record that low-class stuff. But the style grew anyway. 1991 Bachata Rosa shifted five million units Dancing bachata-style AP/AP/PA at Sabor Latino industryPHOTO CREDIT from developing, so “Because the music was completely being worldwide in two years. That album (whose » 38 Songlines June 2008 June 2008 Songlines 39 ° BACHATA ° Bachata is heard in every title, meaning ‘pink bachata’, is parodied by de colmado (convenience store) – Menil’s soundalike title Bachata Roja – red and colmados are everywhere bachata) had little or nothing to do with life in Villa Mella, and, for this listener at least, Guerra’s lovely, literate songs lacked amargue.

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