EXCERPT
Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity
Paul Austerlitz

Temple University Press
1997

Table of Contents

Forward by Robert Farris Thompson

Preface

1 Introduction

Part I: The History of Merengue, 1854-1961

2 Nineteenth-Century Caribbean Merengue

3 Merengue Cibaeño, Cultural Nationalism, and Resistance

4 Music and the State: Merengue during the Era of Trujillo, 1930-1961

Part II: The Contemporary Era, 1961-1995

5 Merengue in the Transnational Community

6 Innovation and Social Issues in Pop Merengue

7 Merengue on the Global Stage

8 Enduring Localism

Introduction

An often-quoted anecdote maintains that merengue originated in 1844, the year that the Dominican Republic was founded (Vidal in Hernández 1927:6; Hernández in Ysalguez 1975b:50-51; Coopersmith 1945:86-87, 1949:19-20; Roberts 1972:106-107). As the story goes, a Dominican soldier named Tomás Torres had abandoned his station during the Battle of Talanquera in the War of Independence. The Dominicans won the battle, and while celebrating the victory at night, soldiers sang the first merengue, which mocked the cowardly Torres:

Toma' juyó con la bandera
Toma' juyó de la Talanquera:
Si juera yo, yo no juyera,
Toma' juyó con la bandera (in Hernández 1927:6).

Thomas fled with the flag,
Thomas fled from Talanquera;
If it had been I, I wouldn't have fled:
Thomas fled with the flag.

Related by journalist Rafael Vidal to composer and folklorist Julio Alberto Hernández, this account first appeared in print in 1927, during a period when merengue was beginning to gain currency as a national symbol. A melody for the song and a similar text appear in the same year in another publication, Julio Arzeño's Del folklore musical dominicano. Arzeño, however, did not consider it a merengue, classifying it as a "patriotic song" instead (1927:127).¹ The Battle of Talanquera theory of merengue’s origin is clearly dubious history, but it is a powerful myth, because it links music and national identity in a solid bond, a bond that has endured through most of merengue’s history.
       The true origin of this music will never be known with certainty. But whatever their differences, theories about merengue's origin express deep-rooted feelings about Dominican identity. Although they differ in many important ways, the Dominican Republic and Haiti share many cultural characteristics. Like merengue in the Dominican Republic, mereng (in Haitian Creole, méringue in French) is a national symbol in Haiti. Fouchard suggests that mereng evolved from the fusion of slave musics such as the chica and calenda with ballroom forms related to the French contredanse (1988:5-10). He also writes that mereng's name derives from the mouringue music of the Bara, a Bantu people of Madagascar (1988:77-82, 1973:110). The fact that few Malagasies came to the Americas renders this etymology dubious, but it is significant because it foregrounds what Fouchard, and most Haitians, consider the essentially African-derived nature of their music and national identity.² Fouchard posits that Dominican merengue developed directly from Haitian mereng during the 1822-44 period in which Haitians ruled Spanish Dominicans (1988:66).
       Dominicans are often disinclined to admit African and Haitian influences on their culture. As ethnomusicologist Martha Davis points out, many Dominican scholars

have, at the least, ignored African influence in Santo Domingo. At the worst, they have bent over backwards to convince themselves and their readers of the one hundred percent Hispanic content of their culture. This is not an uncommon Latin American reaction to the inferiority complex produced by centuries of Spanish colonial domination (1975:9).

Merengue innovator Luis Alberti writes that merengue "has nothing to do with black or African rhythms" (1975:71). The proclivity to hide connections with Africa is related to anti-Haitian sentiment, and relationships between the national musics of Haiti and the Dominican Republic have often been ignored or downplayed in Dominican merengue scholarship. Several standard Dominican sources, written by competent scholars, that mention merengue in Puerto Rico and other countries neglect to even acknowledge the existence of Haitian mereng (Nolasco 1956:321-41; del Castillo and García Arévalo 1988:17; Lizardo 1978a, 1978b; Lizardo in Ysalguez 1979a:51,). Peña-Morel is one of the few Dominicans to acknowledge that merengue is something that Dominicans share with Haitians. For him, however, this fact renders merengue an inappropriate Dominican symbol; he suggests that another genre, the mangulina, is more representative of national culture (1929 III:1,3).³
       In the 1970s, some Dominican intellectuals and artists began to challenge this Eurocentrism by celebrating the African contributions to Dominican culture and looking at connections to Haiti. The musicologist Jorge noted that

anti-Haitian sentiment and the tendency to hide and/or minimize the African roots of our [Dominican] culture on the part of the bourgeois intelligentsia have obstructed understanding and study not only of merengue, but of numerous forms of Dominican culture through the years (1982:33).

Prominent in this movement was Dominican folklorist Fradique Lizardo, who discussed the African influence on Dominican culture (1979) and asserted that "merengue’s origin is in Africa" (in Ysalguez 1975a:50). Lizardo was criticized for making such statements. For example, the respected dance music composer Luis Senior said that he was "horrified" by Lizardo's assertion, and that it is “unpatriotic” to call merengue African (in Ysalguez 1976d:50). Lizardo's theory of merengue's origin resembles Fouchard’s. Asserting that the Bara of Madagascar perform a dance called "merengue" and noting that they utilize a drum similar to the Dominican tambora, which is prominent in Dominican merengue,⁴ Lizardo suggests that Bara and other African musics were syncretized with a Cuban form called the danza, and that this gave rise to Caribbean merengue (1978a; also see 1978b:11-13).⁵ As mentioned earlier, few Malagasies came to the Americas. Moreover, the facts that drums similar to the tambora are diffused widely in Africa (and Asia), and that several styles of merengue (both in and out of the Dominican Republic) do not use the tambora weigh against Lizardo's idea that merengue derives specifically from the Bara.
       In spite of their differences, almost all of the origin theories point to connections between merengue European ballroom dance musics such as the danza (Fouchard 1988:15-21; Lizardo 1978a; Nolasco 1939:60, 1948:164-65, 1956:322; Hernández 1969:65; Rueda 1990b). Nolasco feels that merengue's association with these forms indicates that its origins are in Europe (1948:164-65). Although Rueda acknowledges the possibility of some African influence on merengue, he also believes that its European influences demonstrate merengue’s Euro-American nature and discredits the idea that merengue is Afro-Caribbean (1990b). Hernández, however, points out that European-derived musics came under African influence in the Americas, arguing that while merengue developed from European forms, it is a syncretic, Afro-Hispanic genre (1969:53). Singer Joseito Mateo, the "king of merengue," concurs, pointing out that racial amalgamation naturally produces syncretic music:

Dominican whites and blacks [originally] had their own musics, just as in the United States, the blacks have their own music. But gradually, what is called a fusion of the two races came about, the blacks and the whites. And so, a música mestiza was formed; that is, a mixed music. The white contributes his part, and the black contributes his drums (interview).

For most Dominicans, then, discussion of merengue's origin is equated with discussion of Dominican national and racial identity. Eurocentric thinkers emphasize merengue's European elements, Afrocentric scholars emphasize its African elements, and those who celebrate racial amalgamation point to its syncretic nature. While they do not agree on the nature of Dominicanness, all of these constituencies agree that Dominican identity is expressed in merengue.

A Mixed-Race Community

The Dominican Republic’s population is estimated at 80% mixed African and European, 15% black, and 5% white; Dominican sociologist Pérez Cabral aptly calls it a "comunidad mulata," or mixed-race community (1967:75).⁶ As Martha Davis writes, the African-derived element in this mix is considerable: the Dominican Republic “without doubt, should be considered an Afro-American nation -- that is, a New World nation in which the African cultural influence figures prominently, if not predominantly" (1976:2; also see Lizardo 1979; Aretz and Ramón y Rivera 1973; Austerlitz 1986, 1992). But this does not mean that the European element in Dominican culture is negligible; the upper classes, as well as the campesinos (country people, peasants) in certain regions, are of predominantly Spanish origin. Spaniards and Africans were not strangers when they met in the Americas; Spain had come into a great deal of contact with Africa during the 700 year Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula. Ortiz writes that the forces occupying Spain came from as far away as Timbuktu (1952-55, vol. 3:64), and Curtin notes that many Spanish entrants to the Caribbean were “free settlers of partial African descent" (1969:31). Juan Bosch suggests that economic conditions in colonial Santo Domingo may have produced the "de facto, if not de jure, liberation of the slaves, to extent that these already in 1659 behaved as free men, although they were not free legally" (1988:121; quoted and translated in Hoetink 1973:85). Black and mixed-race freedmen outnumbered both whites and slaves in Spanish Santo Domingo by the end of the eighteenth century.
       Positioned at a juncture between Old World civilizations, Dominicans developed a unique culture steeped in both African and Spanish traditions. This Afro-Spanish borderland spawned myriad musics. These include a wealth of African-derived styles such as palos, congo, and sarandunga drumming, which are performed by Afro-Dominican religious brotherhoods; European-influenced forms such as chuines, influenced by Canary Islands music; and many syncretic styles such as merengue and mangulina, characterized by a fusion of African and European elements (see Davis 1976, 1981; Lizardo 1975).
       Mountainous terrain and poor roads kept five primary areas of the Dominican Republic relatively isolated from each other; regionalism has been central to both music and politics in the country.⁷ El Sur (the South), the largely arid southwestern portion of the country, contains large cattle ranches and Santo Domingo, the capital of the Republic, while sugar cultivation as well as ranching dominate el Este (the East). The lush northeastern Samaná peninsula was settled by black entrants from Haiti, the English-speaking Caribbean, and the United States. The fertile, rolling mountains of the country’s most densely-populated central region, el Cibao, have been used mainly for small-scale fruit, vegetable, tobacco, and coffee cultivation, and shares many cultural characteristics with the more arid Línea Noroeste (north-west border). The country’s oligarchy was long concentrated in the Cibao's largest city, Santiago de los Caballeros (literally, "Santiago of the Gentlemen"). While Dominicans of both African and European descent live in all areas of the Republic, the Cibao contains⁸ the highest degree of European ancestry in both urban and rural areas. As Pérez Cabral puts it,

the South and East of the country became true centers of mulatos...[while] several areas of the Cibao maintained a preponderance of white population more or less devoid of African physical characteristics (1967:132-33).⁹

The high concentration of European blood, combined with the presence many oligarchs and its large population, precipitated what Hoetink terms a "hierarchy of regions, in which the Cibao had always been dominant" (1982:50, emphasis his). Variants of merengue developed in several regions of the country, but only the Cibao version gained national prominence.

Syncretism and Articulation

A cleavage between the Dominican Republic’s dominant, Hispanocentric, ideology and its cultural reality caused mixed feelings similar to a "socialized ambivalence" that Herskovits noted in Haiti. Herskovits wrote that this predicament is caused by a Haitian's “possession by the gods of his [African] ancestors...despite his strict Catholic upbringing,” and that his “desire to understand and worship the gods of his ancestors” is followed by “utter remorse after having done this” (1937:295-96). Many Dominicans reveal similar mixed feelings about local music and national identity. Urban middle and upper classes are often attracted to rural arts as expressions of a national character, but eschew them in practice because most Dominican musics are associated with African-derived religious practices. One Dominican friend told me on several occasions that he would like to view some of my videotapes of rural Dominican festivals. But he made it clear that he only wanted to look at tapes that "do not involve the saints or the dead"; the worship of saints and religious homage to ancestors in the Dominican Republic is associated with African-derived beliefs that my friend considered taboo. Because most Dominican rural festivals are, in fact, held in honor of saints or deceased community members, it was difficult for me to find tapes that he could view. Most Dominicans thus prefer to think of the Cibao variant of merengue as representative of their traditional culture. Davis, who has conducted extensive research on Afro-Dominican drumming, writes that

When I say that I study folk music, Dominicans on the whole say, "Oh, you mean the [Cibao-style] merengue" Long drum and other strongly African influenced types of music are not perceived as "folklore" (1976:10).

Or, they are not perceived as presentable folklore. Ironically, merengue is often performed as a recreational component of African-influenced rituals that Eurocentric Dominicans eschew.
       Bourguignon noted a relationship between mixed feelings and syncretism, arguing that while the latter "helps to present a complete picture of the universe,...ambivalence is essentially disruptive not only to a harmonious world-view, but even to successful self-identification" (1951:173; also see Bourguignon 1969). But judgments resting in rigidly relativistic compartmentalization don’t do justice to life’s complexity; as Rosaldo writes, many cultural phenomena “escape analysis because they fail to conform with standard expectations” (1988:79). Explicating his influential notion of "double-consciousness” in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois noted that mixed feelings cut both ways, sometimes widening, rather than limiting, people’s horizons. He acknowledged that the African-American "ever feels...two warring ideals in one dark body,” but also held that while this may “seem like the absence of power,...it is not weakness, -- it is the contradiction of double aims” (1989 [1903]:3). Far from being a flaw, the predicament that Herskovits describes are a natural outgrowth of the colonial encounter, a result of the inculcation of hegemonic values;¹⁰ as Franz Fanon writes, “ambivalence” is “inherent to the colonial situation” (1983:67; also see Smith 1983:93-95; Wilcken 1992; Ferrán 1985). Complex feelings engender multifaceted creativity; through the years, Dominican musicians have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to changing realities by incorporating non-Dominican elements into merengue. This multiple signification has given the music a special aesthetic relevance to changing times.
       One-sided theoretical frameworks for considering merengue are inadequate. Adorno believed that popular culture promotes the interests of the ruling class (1976), while commentators such as Fiske argue that it belongs to "subordinated and disempowered" elements of society (1989:4). Calling attention to the deficiencies of both views, McGuigan calls for a "critical populism" to replace the sometimes naively celebratory tone of "cultural populist" scholarship on one hand, and Adorno’s position on the other (1992:5). Stuart Hall affirms that

Popular culture is neither, in a "pure" sense, the popular traditions of resistance...nor is it the forms that are superimposed on and over them. It is the ground on which the transformations are worked (1981:228, quoted in Middleton 1990:7).

He thus proposes that we look at popular culture in terms of articulation, because this term "carries the sense of language-ing, of expressing," but more importantly, because

in England...we also speak of an articulated lorry (truck), a lorry where the front (cab) and back (trailer) can, but need not necessarily, be connected to one another...So the so-called “unity” of a discourse is really the articulation of different, distinct elements which can be rearticulated in different ways because they have no necessary "belongingness" (Grossberg and Hall 1981:53, quoted in McGuigan 1992:34).

Syncretic, multivalent, and fluid, merengue has endured as a symbol of Dominican identity by successfully articulating the contradictory forces at play in Dominican life.

References Cited

Damirón, Rafael. 1947. De nuestro Sur remoto. Cuidad Trujillo: Publicaciónes de la Secretaría de Educación y Bellas Artes.

Fouchard 1988 La méringue, le danse nacional de Haiti, second edition. Pétion-Ville: Edicions Henri Deschamps.

Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers.

Herskovits 1958-----1958 (1941). The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: The Beacon Press.

Hoetink 1982 Hoetink, H. 1982. The Dominican People 1850-1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lizardo, Fradique. 1979. La cultura africana en Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Taller.

López Morillo, Adriano. 1983. La segunda reincorporación de Santo Domingo a España. Santo Domingo: Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliófilos.

Sachs, Curt. 1938. "Les instruments de musique de Madagascar." In Travaux et Mémoires de Institut d'Ethnologie 20. Paris: Université de Paris.

Wiarda, Howard. 1969. The Dominican Republic: Nation in Transition. New York: Praeger.

Williams, Raymond. 1991. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” In Rethinking Popular Culture. edited by Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson. Berkeley: University of California Press.