A Midnight Serenade

Music from the Dominican Republic

Page 1   |   2   |   3

By Sydney Hutchinson

During my fieldwork in the Dominican Republic, ongoing battles against the local "crazy ants" (so called because of their chaotic movement patterns) seemed to take up an inordinate amount of time. I knew that with my graduate-school education I had to be smarter than they were, but in spite of all my precautions, the ants did occasionally win. I was just recovering from a particularly nasty bout of ant-induced itching on the Friday that my friend Chiqui Taveras, a merengue típico accordionist, invited me to join him at a friend's birthday party in the nearby town of Moca. The timing was also good because I'd just got new CV boots put on the Millennium Falcon, as my 1984 Honda Civic had been christened. I therefore volunteered to transport musicians and instruments in exchange for the evening's entertainment.

Merengue típico was, after all, the whole reason I was in Santiago to begin with. I had fallen in love with this fiery, accordion-based Caribbean music while living in Brooklyn, New York—the other hotbed of típico activity. The only sure-fire way to learn to play it myself, it seemed, was to go to its home, the Dominican Republic's northern Cibao region, and study with the master, Rafaelito Román. Soon after starting my apprenticeship in 2004, I'd met Chiqui, a multi-instrumentalist then playing saxophone in Román's group, and had become fast friends with his entire family. Although Chiqui came from the border town of Dajabón, his wife Laura's family lived in Moca. Thus, Laura joined me, Chiqui, and his tambora (double-headed drum) and güira (metal scraper) players for the drive out.

Besides the crazy ants, another bane of my Dominican existence was driving on "highways" at night. When the power is out (which is often the case), you can't see where the potholes are hiding (which is everywhere), and those drivers who refuse to turn down their brights (all of them) blind you from seeing those motorbikes that have no lights or reflectors (most of them). It is a harrowing experience, and by the time we got to Moca, my eyes were burning. I realized I hadn't blinked the entire time.

We pulled up to a large, two-story house with a carport and tile floors, indicating the birthday boy's position in life as a successful businessman in this medium-sized town. He and his friends were seated around a table on the patio in back, separated by a barbed-wire fence from a plantain grove behind. The light from the single energy-saving bulb was eerie in the midst of all that darkness. Someone was getting a barbecue fired up at the other end of the porch, and most of the women were busy in the kitchen. We took our seats at one end of the table and were soon brought beer. Before long, hors d'oeuvres were served too: olives and cheese, peanuts and raisins, and guacamole and chips, an exotic touch for this locale.

Though not an old man, the birthday boy seemed to be a real traditional rural leader type, the kind of "big man" in the country who has always supported merengue típico. So to him, a party just wasn't a party without a perico ripiao, a merengue típico trio. He said that he liked to hear "merengues de mangas largas," an expression I'd never come across. Just what would "long-sleeved merengues" be? Turns out they were the classics, the kind people here usually called "merengues de fiesta" or party merengues, but that didn't explain why they were long-sleeved. Laura suggested it was because long sleeves keep out the cold.

Page 1   |   2   |   3