From The Archives 18: The American-Dominican Bridge of Bachata

I first got introduced to Bachata in the Spring of 2014 when I randomly signed up for a dance class Bachata Bootcamp. Since then, I've also learned Salsa, and I've done a good bit of Bachata and Salsa dancing whenever I can over the past few years- I even went to Tampa Salsa & Bachata Festival in 2018! So given the chance to write about any type of popular music in Latin America, I of course had to write about the genre of my favorite dance style.

***

December 2018

            In the past couple decades; hispanic/latin music has gotten increasingly more popular in the United States. Some of the most popular genres have been salsa, merengue, bachata, and reggaeton. While they’ve all been rightfully important, bachata in particular has been a great bridge between countries and genres, helping to increase the overall popular listening habits in Americans, and shedding more of a light on a significant portion of the populace.

            Bachata’s origin started, linguistically, by meaning an “informal gathering in a gathering or patio, enlivened by food, drink, music, and dance” in the Dominican Republic. (Hernandez 2016) The bachata music that emerged was guitar-based and associated with rural beginnings. As urbanization increased in the 1960s and 70s, bachata spread to the cities through the working class. With that migration, the center point for social space shifted from a feminine-dominated home in the country to masculine-dominated bars and brothels in the city. (Hernandez 1990) 

Like most popular music, the focus of the music was on love and sexuality. The first bachata songs usually were “laments of love lost or unrequited” focused on the romance, pleas to the divine, or complaints about their situation. (Hernandez 1990) With the growth of bachata aligning with an increase in the use of male-dominated social centers, bachata has mainly come from the perspective of heterosexual men. Bachata’s beginnings had very few female artists, but many of the songs had to do about women. The rapid urbanization made work particularly hard to find, so many had to turn to prostitution, which was an increasingly popular activity for many of the men who had left their families in the country to work in a city without an established support and social structure. As prostitution became a major component to the romantic and sexual lives of urban men, casual sex became a major theme of bachata.

With those changing relationship dynamics came a lot of anger of deception and abandonment from the men in bachata. Despite the situation usually being one of casual sex, there were a lot of lyrical claims of ownership and blame on the woman for not staying with him forever. The number of songs mentioning drinking and bars increased, and whereas the earliest bachata were often directed towards the woman, that shifted to often be towards the men drinking in the bar.

The lyrical image of an urban woman was completely shown through the male perspective. However, in terms of her sexuality, bachata wouldn’t shy away from discussing her needs and pleasures. Bachata has always been very blatant about sex, and including both genders in that necessary. Gender dynamics do become obvious in the word choices for genital innuendos. By using food items, particularly fruit, as a substitution for the actual names of body parts, there’s an association being created between women and the natural world, along with being consumable. The male substitutions ranged from man made creations to things from nature, perhaps showing a dominance of the range of what men can be. (Hernandez 1990) 

The “vulgarity” of sex, and the prevalence of sex in bachata lyrically kept bachata from leaving the common association of it being a “low class” style of music that was assumed by the general public and music industry alike. I wasn’t until Juan Luis Guerra’s 1990 album Bachata Rosawas released and won a Latin Grammy for the mindset the change. (Hernandez 2016) The album was a fusion of music genres and much more poetic than bawdy, but his standing in the music community was high enough to make a significant statement for acceptance of the genre and its musicians.  

As bachata moved into the new century, the style renovated itself. Immigration to the United States, and particularly to New York City, had increased substantially by the 1990s. After having been the birthplace of salsa and a major hub for merengue, it was natural for bachata to blossom in New York City. The community of second generation Dominicans were listening to and playing the music of their heritage and making it their own. Living in a bilingual world where Spanish was spoken at home, and English was spoken at school allowed for Spanglish to gradually become more and more common in bachata moderna. (Hernandez 2016) As the current form of bachata, most will refer to this newer bachata as bachata moderna.

The immigrant narrative of feeling split between two countries, even if they’d never been to the country of their parents origin, or had left at a young age, was a struggle relevant for this new generation, and they didn’t have many resources to help them navigate it. However, it was relevant to more than just the Dominican community, and so bachata helped them to connect to the other children of latino immigrants, breaking down barriers of nationalities. Bachata became a narrative to understand their complicated heritage and to connect them with others who felt the same. 

In terms of race, Dominicans tend not to think of themselves as black, associating blackness with Haitians. So bachata originally had no association with blackness, only with being poor. By moving to the United States, Dominicans were being categorized much more often as black when that wasn’t an identity they didn’t use for themselves. Stylistically, creating in New York City provides different influential genres than the Dominican Republic does. Some of those genres, like hip-hop and R&B, do have an association with blackness for Americans, so the conversation of race has been acknowledged more with the bachata coming from the States. (Hernandez 2016) 

Because of these associations, another term for bachata moderna has been bachata urbana. Hip-hop and R&B have had a significant impact on bachata urbana because of their prevalence within the music industry in New York, but also because of the racial consolidation of Hispanics and blacks as being non-white. And even though Spanglish has increased, there continues to be mostly Spanish or Spanglish for bachata to affirm and maintain a Hispanic identity within the genre.

The lyrics have generally stayed within the theme of romantic love and sexuality, but discussion of casual sex with prostitutes became less prevalent. The original theme of love and loss is the norm for bachata moderna. Unrequited love maintains being a popular topic, and long distance love is particularly relevant for the touring artist. Thankfully, bachata moderna is less misogynistic than early bachata, but that is likely because of the changed level of social standing and the reduction of the influence of prostitution from desperate woman, as had existed in the Dominican Republic. As bachateros have grown successful in the American music industry, lyrics relating to a party lifestyle have also proliferated. Drinking continues to be relevant within bachata lyrics, but the club has been added to the bar as settings for the storyline of the songs. 

Any discussion of bachata moderna cannot exclude Aventura. When it comes to bachata moderna from New York City, they led the charge. They were the first group of bachata moderna from New York to become incredibly successful, and the first to use English in their lyrics, mixed in with Spanish. (Tallaj  2017) They were also the ones to start mixing in hip-hop and R&B influences into their bachata. Their success helped to solidify acceptance of bachata in the music industry, and with the larger scale to the American music industry, Aventura could grow much bigger more quickly than if they had started in the Dominican Republic. The transnational audience within the United States allowed for a quickly spread of popularity across latinos from various countries as well as the greater American audience.

Despite their great success, not everyone initially accepted Aventura. Their label, Premium Latin Music, supported their fusion of more “American” genres with a more traditional Dominican one who they have been signed to since 2000, but there was mixed feelings from the crowds. (Cobo 2013) Even so, the second generation of immigrants were the ones who understood best Aventura’s aim, and felt represented by Aventura in a way that hadn’t been happening yet in bachata. Once they managed to collaborate with artists outside of the bachata realm, the industry started to pay more attention. They got progressively more popular in Latin America, the United States, and Europe, but their main audience remains mostly in the Hispanic community. 

After 2011, the band members separated for solo careers, but Aventura has occasionally performed or created music together since then. But from their separation, Romeo Santos, the lead singer for Aventura, was able to launch a hugely successful solo career. His popularity was already increasing when Aventura sold out multiple shows in Madison Square Gardens in 2010, and the public took even more notice when he sold out two shows in Yankee Stadium in 2014. (Hernandez 2016) From his combined experience with Aventura and on his own, he is easily one of the biggest stars in the Bachata world, and the number of collaborations he’s done with hip-hop and R&B artists has helped him to become one of the biggest stars in latino music.

The other solo artist most important in Bachata’s resurgence is without a doubt, Prince Royce. Prince Royce came into the music scene with his Spanglish version of “Stand By Me” in 2010. The song was a hit; introducing the bachata music scene to an artist would continue the relationship between English and Spanish in Bachata lyrics that Aventura had started. Although his first hit was Spanglish, he was very aware of the preference for Spanish being in bachata, and he kept the English lyrics at a balance to ensure that the Latin heritage of the genre was being respected. (Hernandez 2016) 

In terms of sexuality, his next hit in 2011, “Corazon Sin Cara” showed the distinct growth the genre had experienced since its misogynistic origins. The song talks to his love, telling her that it doesn’t matter what she looks like in terms of her size, her skin color, or her “beauty” because that is not what is important in love. Not only does it help to elevate the bachata themes from the anger at prostitutes for supposedly deceiving men, and bring it up to a theme of eternal romantic love, but he covers a lot of societal expectations as well. 

Mentioning race, especially as a Latino in America, shows his awareness of how race is seen differently than it is in the Dominican Republic, and that although both Americans and Dominicans have radicalized notions on what it means to be black, that for him, race is not something he will judge somebody by. He also mentions not caring if she is wearing makeup, and points out that he doesn’t need “perfection” nor is he perfect, demonstrating that although he’s singing a song about romantic love, his expectations of love are not as unattainable as they seem in most songs about romantic love. (Prince Royce 2011)

Of course, since his initial hits, Prince Royce has written a variety of love songs, which have also included more mentions of sex than what appears in those first two songs. He has also continued to sing with various levels of Spanish and English, representing the two sides to his identity, the different genres included in his fusion, and the duality of heritage that so many other children of immigrants face. Even more than Aventura and Romeo Santos, Prince Royce explores his English-singing American side with songs that are more pop than latino, learning how its written, sung, and received differently than his more traditional bachata hits. (Goldman 2015) 

Before the surgent popularity of reggaeton spanning continents past Latin America, Prince Royce was the one singing in the divide that colonizers had created between Hispanic and America. The gradual rise of Hispanic recognition had been growing with salsa’s formation and merengue’s popularity, and bachata had been the stepping point to reggaeton’s ability to become #1 charting songs across America and Europe in a way that lasted more than a one hit wonder. Even though bachata has a misogynistic and problematic past, the journey the genre has experienced in such a short few decades has created a lasting genre of music that helped lead the way for the Latino world to receive true recognition by the rest of the world.

Bibliography

Cobo, Leila. "Aventura: The Billboard Cover Story." Billboard. January 14, 2013. Accessed December 2018. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/958477/aventura-the-billboard-cover-story.

Goldman, Vivien. "Prince Royce: Bronx Bachata King Poised to Go Global." The Guardian. July 24, 2015. Accessed December 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/24/prince-royce-bronx-bachata-king-double-vision.

Hernandez, Deborah Pacini. "Cantando La Cama Vacía: Love, Sexuality and Gender Relationships in Dominican Bachata." Popular Music9, no. 03 (October 1990): 351-67. doi:10.1017/s026114300000413x.

Hernandez, Deborah Pacini. "Dominican Bachata: Moving from El Campo to the Garden." ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America15, no. 2 (Winter 2016): 66-70. Accessed December 2018. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/dominican-bachata.

"Prince Royce – Corazon Sin Cara." Genius. December 12, 2011. Accessed December 2018. https://genius.com/Prince-royce-corazon-sin-cara-lyrics.

Tallaj, Angelina. "Dominican Migrants, Plural Identities, and Popular Music." American Music Review46, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 1-6. Accessed December 2018.