Historia General del Pueblo Dominicano Tomo VI

Historia general del pueblo dominicano 739 Sharing African-derived characteristics such as a metronomic pulse and interlocking rhythms, jazz and merengue had a firm basis for fusion. On the other hand, jazz’s social meanings in the Dominican Republic differed from its meanings in the United States. Created by African-Americans, an oppressed minority group, jazz represented an alternative to dominant Euro- American culture in North America. In the Dominican Republic, however, jazz was associated with elite, cosmopolitan culture, and often represented connections to the hegemonic and imperialist United States. While Dominican musicians looked to jazz for new options in creativity, their audiences were often attracted to it as a marker of social status. Dance-band merengue showed a remarkable capacity to incorporate elements of other musics. For example, when Mexican rancheras and Brazilian sambas became popular, Dominican bands recorded merengue versions of the foreign hits. Hybrid genres were created. Luis Senior created the bolemengue , a fusion of the Cuban bolero and merengue, in which the güira and tambora play slowly. Capitalizing on the importance of the saxophone in the Cuban mambo as well as in merengue, Pedro Pérez invented the jalemengue , which consisted of a mambo-inspired saxophone introduction followed by a jaleo. 86 A merengue arrangement of « Skokiaan», an internationally-popular South African song, made a big hit in the late 1950s. 87 Recorded byAntonioMorel y su Orquesta and arranged by Félix del Rosario, the Dominican « Skokiaan» fused elements of South African tsaba , big-band jazz, and merengue cibaeño. While the Dominican, North American, and South African elements each retain their own aesthetic integrity, the arrangement’s three black Atlantic sources share so many stylistic characteristics that they coalesce to a remarkable extent. The fact that the original « Skokiaan» was a tsaba , or « syncretic style of [South] African urban music blending African melody and rhythm, American swing, and Latin American» music, 88 illustrates the breadth of pan-African musical cross-fertilization that was taking place. Native forms other than merengue, especially the salve , were also used as fodder for dance band arrangements. Rural salve melodies are often in the minor mode, and their rhythmic accompaniment varies greatly from region to region. Big-band salve arrangements combined merengue cibaeño percussion rhythms with salve melodies and newly-composed texts. The result was thus a merengue/salve fusion marked by its minor-mode melodies. Arrangements of the mangulina were also played. Trujillo’s regime was intensely personalistic, and adulation of the tyrant approached deification. Merengue composers wrote songs praising