Historia General del Pueblo Dominicano Tomo VI

742 Popular Music and Identity since the Nineteenth Century N ew M eanings for M erengue The assassination of Trujillo on May 30th, 1961 aroused a celebratory mood, and during the year that followed, people danced in the streets to merengues denouncing the fallen dictator. Antonio Morel, who had just recently been performing Trujilloist music, popularized an adaptation of a rural merengue called « La muerte del chivo», ( « The Death of the Goat»). La muerte del chivo Mataron al chivo en la carretera déjenmelo ver, déjenmelo ver. Mataron al chivo y no me lo dejaron ver. 98 Instead of falling with the dictator, Trujillo’s favorite music thus lived on to deride him. Pro Trujillo merengues were even prohibited in 1962. 99 Radical changes in popular culture and intellectual life paralleled the rapidly changing political scene. The lifting of Trujillo’s restrictions on foreign travel and trade opened the Dominican Republic to international connections. Starved for these contacts, Dominicans enthusiastically embraced artistic and intellectual currents emanating from outside the country. The Puerto Rican band Cortijo y su Combo played a seminal role in developing salsa , as this music was later dubbed. Cortijo abandoned the big-band style of 1950s Latin Caribbean music in favor of a smaller conjunto format, which used only two to five wind instruments. Cortijo’s popularity inspired Dominican musicians to adapt the conjunto format tomerengue. PrimitivoSantoswas reputedly thefirst merengue bandleader to do so, and the majority of the 1960s groups followed suit. Merengue conjuntos differed from salsa conjuntos in their customary use of saxophones in addition to trumpets and trombones; substituting for the accordion, saxophones were essential to the music. Merengue conjuntos (or orquestas ) consisted of alto and tenor saxophones, trumpets, trombone, piano, electric bass, tambora, congas, and güira. The biggest hit of 1962 was a fast and unabashedly driving merengue entitled « La agarradera», composed by Luis Pérez and performed by his conjunto. Pérez explains that « La agarradera» was inspired by the Trujilloist