Bachata (music)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please
help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find
sources: "Bachata" music – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Octobe
r 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Bachata

Cultural origins Dominican Republic

Subgenres

 Traditional bachata

 bachatón

Regional scenes

 Dominican Republic

 Cuba

 Puerto Rico

 United States

 Mexico

 Curaçao

 Haiti

 Panama

 Chile

 Colombia

 El Salvador

 Honduras

 Venezuela

 Guatemala

 Nicaragua

 Costa Rica

 Ecuador

Other topics
  Merengue

 kompa

Bachata is a genre of Latin American music that originated in the Dominican

Republic in the first half of the 20th century with primarily Spanish influences and
also remnants of indigenous and African musical elements, representative of the
cultural diversity of the Dominican Republic population. [1]
The first recorded compositions of bachata were done by José Manuel
Calderón from the Dominican Republic. Bachata originates
from bolero and son (and later, from the mid-1980s, merengue). The original term
used to name the genre was amargue ("bitterness", "bitter music" or "blues
music"), until the rather ambiguous (and mood-neutral) term bachata became
popular. The form of dance, bachata, also developed with the music.[2]

Contents

 1Overview
 2Instrumentations
 3Music history
 4See also
 5References
 6External links

Overview[edit]

A couple dancing bachata

The earliest bachata originated in the countryside of the Dominican Republic in the
first half of the 20th century. José Manuel Calderón recorded the first bachata
song, "Borracho de amor" in 1962. The genre mixed the pan-Latin American style
called bolero with more elements coming from son, and the troubadour singing
tradition common in Latin America. During much of its history, bachata music was
disregarded by Dominican elite and associated with rural underdevelopment and
crime. As recently as the 1980s, bachata was considered too vulgar, crude and
musically rustic to be broadcast on television or radio in the Dominican Republic. In
the 1990s, however, bachata's instrumentation changed from nylon string Spanish
guitar and maracas of traditional bachata to the electric steel string and guira of
modern bachata. Bachata further transformed in the 21st century with the creation
of urban bachata styles by bands such as Monchy y Alexandra and Aventura.
These new modern styles of bachata became an international phenomenon, and
today bachata is one of the most popular styles of Latin music.

Bachata

Instrumentations[edit]
The typical bachata group consists of five instruments: requinto (lead guitar),
segunda (rhythm guitar), bass guitar, bongos and güira. The segunda serves the
purpose of adding syncopation to the music. Bachata groups mainly play a
straightforward style of bolero (lead guitar instrumentation
using arpeggiated repetitive chords is a distinctive characteristic of bachata), but
when they change to merengue-based bachata, the percussionist will switch from
bongo to a tambora drum. In the 1960s and 1970s, maracas were used instead of
güira. The change in the 1980s from maracas to the more versatile güira was
made as bachata was becoming more dance oriented. [2]

Music history[edit]
Main article: Bachata (dance)
The first Dominican bachatas were recorded immediately after the death of Trujillo,
whose 30-year dictatorship was accompanied by censorship. José Manuel
Calderón is credited as having recorded the first bachata singles: ("Borracho de
amor" and "Que será de mi (Condena)") released on 45 rpm in 1962. After Trujillo's
death, the floodgates were opened: following Calderon's historic bachata debut
came more recordings by the likes of Rodobaldo Duartes, Rafael Encarnacion,
Ramoncito Cabrera, El Chivo Sin Ley, Corey Perro, Antonio Gómez Sacero, Luis
Segura, Louis Loizides, Eladio Romero Santos, Ramón Cordero and many more.
The 1960s saw the birth of the Dominican music industry and of the bachata music
which would dominate it.
While the bachatas being recorded in the 1960s had a distinctly Dominican flavor,
they were regarded at the time as a variant of bolero, as the term bachata, which
originally referred to an informal rustic party, had not yet come into use. This term
was first applied to the music by those seeking to disparage it. The higher echelons
of Dominican society felt that bachata music was an expression of cultural
backwardness, and a campaign ensued to brand bachata in this negative light.
[3]
 Bachata was not always legal, but to enjoy this kind of music it was considered
"vulgar and sensual" and the higher class did not want to ruin the reputation so
they did not dance nor listen.[4] If one did dance bachata or listen to bachata it was
considered lowly. Since bachata was illegal, it was not very popular but that has
changed throughout the years since many famous artists have traveled and made
this kind of music more heard and more popular but yet it is not as popular as the
national dance merengue. Bachata music was seen as having sexualized lyrics
because the musicians that wrote this kind of music did not have any musical or
academic schooling which lead to the dancing being sexual as well. [5]
The 1970s were dark years for bachata. The music was seldom played on the
radio, and almost unmentioned on television and in print. Bachateros were also
barred from performing in high society venues – having to content themselves
instead with gigs in bars and brothels in the country's poorest neighborhoods. The
music was influenced by its surroundings; sex, despair and crime were amongst
numerous topics the genre highlighted. This only furthered the cause of those
seeking to tar bachata as a music of the barrios. Despite its unofficial censorship,
bachata remained widely popular, while orchestral merengue benefited from the
country's major publicity outlets. However, bachata continued to outsell
merengue[citation needed]. Some bachateros to emerge from this era were Marino
Perez and Leonardo Paniagua.
By the early 1980s, bachata's popularity could not be denied. Due to popular
demand, more radio stations began playing bachata, and bachateros soon found
themselves performing on television as well. Bachata in the meantime had begun
to take on a more dance-hall sound: tempos increased, guitar playing became
punchier, and call and response singing more prevalent. Bachata style merengues,
or guitar merengues, also became an increasingly important part of the bachata
repertoire. Blas Durán was the first to record with electric guitar in his 1987
bachata-merengue hit, "Mujeres hembras".[3]
By the early 1990s, the sound was further modernized and the bachata scene was
dominated by two new young stars: Luis Vargas and Antony Santos. Both
incorporated a large number of bachata-merengues in their repertoires. Santos,
Vargas and the many new style bachateros who would follow achieved a level of
stardom which was unimaginable to the bachateros who preceded them. They
were the first generation of pop bachata artists and received all the hype and
image branding typical of commercial pop music elsewhere. It was also at this time
that bachata began to emerge internationally as a music of Hispanic dance-halls.
Juan Luis Guerra's Grammy-winning 1992 release, Bachata Rosa, is routinely
credited[by whom?] with making the genre more acceptable and helping bachata achieve
legitimacy and international recognition. Although he used the word bachata in the
album title, none of the songs reflected the distinctive bachata sound. [6]
By the beginning of the 21st century, the bachata group Aventura had taken the
bachata envisioned by Juan Luis Guerra in the early 1990s to new heights. Led by
lead singer Anthony "Romeo" Santos, they revolutionized and modernized the
genre. They sold out Madison Square Garden numerous times and released
countless top ten hits on the hot Latin charts including two number one hits "Por un
segundo" and "Dile al Amor". Other big bachata acts in the decade included
"Monchy y Alexandra" and Los Toros Band. By the beginning of the new decade,
Aventura had split up because group member Henry Santos wanted to go solo,
leaving the others on their own. Today, parallel to bachata music, fusion genres
arose in Western countries such as the US, combining some of the rhythmic
elements of bachata music with elements of Western music such as hip hop, R&B,
pop, techno and more. This fusion genre is quite popular among Western
audiences, and often includes covers of Western pop songs played on MTV and
non-Latin radio stations. Notable artists of the new fusion genre are Prince Royce,
Xtreme and Toby Love, among others. By 2011, former Aventura member Romeo
Santos also joined the fusion bandwagon, releasing several new albums which
became popular in the US and other Western countries. Not only has bachata's
popularity changed but so has its lyrics; before the lyrics were mostly about a
cheating relationship and hurt feelings but now it talks about love and is more
romantic. According to Bachata: Música Del Pueblo ("Bachata: Music of the
People") the writers said: "In the past decade, bachata has been transformed from
a ballad-style guitar music of the rural poor in the Dominican Republic to the
hottest new music in the international Latino music market." [7]