History of Dominican Bachata

Representative of bachata in the Dominican Republic

Dominican bachata is a musical genre that has its beginnings in the slums and in rural areas of the Dominican Republic. Its main instruments were initially Spanish guitars and African-influenced instruments.

Family parties or bohemian nights allowed popular artists to indulge in themes created on the fly. Bachata in those times was known as guaracha or Dominican guaracha and later it was known as bitter music.

Like all musical genres, Bachata is influenced by other genres such as guaracha, bolero and dance, typical of Cuba and Puerto Rico. As it was enriched with new instruments such as the marimba, the guira, the bongo, the maracas and the timbales, the bachata created its own identity, both in performance and dance.

There is still no certainty of the origin of the word bachata, it is said that it comes from Africa and others that it is from Cuba, the truth is that Since the XNUMXth century, the term bachata has been used throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean to refer to the dance and entertainment of poor people., especially the marginal of the urban area.

During the 60's and early 70's, bachata did not have the support of the media., especially from the stations that considered it vulgar music and did not broadcast it with the exception of some radio stations.

Starting in the 80s, bachata burst into the media with great success, thanks to the growth of the popular class population and its importance in the development of the country. Luis Segura's song "Pena por tí" increased the popularity of bachata.

Other representatives of this musical genre are Anthony Santos, Raulín Rodríguez, Teodoro Reyes and Joe Veras, however from the 90's' Juan Luis Guerra became a benchmark of the bachata genre due to its international significance.


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  1.   Juana Burgos said

    In the early years of bachata, any number of influential artists made their impact on the genre. Luís Segura was baptized as “El Padre de la Bachata” due to the impact of his melodramatic vocal performances, as well as his longevity; Edilio Paredes and Augusto Santos played crucial roles, as musicians and arrangers, in forging the stylistic structure of music. Cuco Valoy is unique in having acted as a promoter, radio personality, distributor, and record label artist during the early years of bachata. There is plenty of room to debate which of these bachateros had the greatest influence on the development of the genre. However, there is no debate at all, regarding the fact that the first bachata that should be considered as such was not recorded by any of them, but by José Manuel Calderón on May 30, 1962, in the studios of Radiotelevisión Dominicana. (Drunk with love and Condemnation).

    The style of music that the native of San Pedro recorded was much closer to the bolero than to the arrangements of two additional guitars of the bachata as the most distinguishable. Unlike many other later bachateros, Calderón did not sing with a subtle tenor voice, but rather with a sonorous baritone reminiscent of Mexican singers like Pedro Infante. Many of his arrangements included string sections, trumpet sections, or a piano, although a uniquely Dominican innovation in Calderón's music was the use of the güira instead of the maracas to mark time. Unlike other bachateros, Calderón made his recordings with a güira from day one. His music was also received by the public and by his fellow artists as bolero, without the stigma that bachata could reach a downtrend. He recorded “Por seguirirte” in 1966 accompanied by the Johnny Ventura orchestra, and the great Felipe Rodríguez of the Puerto Rican bolero was instrumental in promoting “Llanto a la luna”, probably Calderón's favorite song. Calderón continued to cultivate an enduring friendship with Rodríguez, whose style is somewhat similar to his. In the year after his groundbreaking first recording, he released four singles, each of which went on to become a classic not only in the genre but also in Dominican culture in general - Quema Those Letters, Tears of Blood, Human Serpent and Crying for the Moon According to Calderón, he went on to record forty-two successive singles that were, by the standards of the informal economy, all of them major hits.

    Calderón enjoyed privileges having worked before the marginalization of the genre, which would no longer be available to later bachateros, making recordings with international record companies such as Kubaney. In 1967, he traveled to New York to record with the BMC record company, and decided to stay there with his lead guitarist Andrés Rodríguez. For the next five years Calderón was a symbol in a music scene that revolved primarily around well-known Puerto Rican bolero players such as Felipe Rodríguez, Blanca Iris Villafañe, Tommy Figueron and Odilio Gonzáles. In this company he played in venues such as the Riopiedras Theater, the Jefferson Theater and the legendary Puerto Rico Theater.

    In 1972, Calderón returned to the Dominican Republic to find a substantial change in the fortunes of bachata. Music had by then become marginalized, associated with prostitution and poverty, and only one radio station nationwide, Radio Guarachita, broadcast the music. The relegation of bachata to “bad life” music in turn affected the public's perception of Calderón, who was listed with other bachateros whose styles were considerably more decadent than his. However, the music he made began to change as the genre changed, and the songs he composed in this period tell the story of life in the brothel and in the neighborhood in the same way that the music of other bachateros ( I took her out of the bar, Drinking at the bar). These songs were commercially successful, but they did not become classics of Dominican popular culture in the way that their previous hits had. The situation was difficult enough to encourage Calderón to return to New York, where he saw a Dominican community grow in the Cumbres de Washington, and spawn a brand-new bachata scene there as well. In the place where he had once played for Puerto Rican audiences alongside Odilio Gonzáles, he now played for Dominican audiences at El Internacional, which later became El Restaurante 27 de Febrero.

    The arrival of the electric guitar in bachata seemed to have overshadowed the style of Calderón and other pioneers. However, with the acceptance of the genre in recent years, he began to receive some small parts of the guaranteed recognition for his classical repertoire, and for his place in history as the first person to record what we now know as bachata. Almost any event that requires the celebration of the long and difficult history of music must include him in the range of performers, and in recent years he has played on the stages of the National Theater, Gran Teatro del Cibao and Lehman and at Hostos universities. Calderón continues to record and distribute his own recordings, and is currently hell-bent on building his own website.