two members of a grupo de diablos, carnival in La Vega
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Hombre/muñeco
another traditional carnival costume in the DR - the man being carried by a mannequin, or in this case, a doll. He is accompanied by a tamborero when he dances.
giant accordion
Orange, a cell phone company here in the DR, elected to decorate their tent at the carnival in La Vega with giant tipico musicians.
Las Fieras
La Vega carnival: I liked this group's cueva (HQ) for their creative and Magritte-esque shading option
Los Yankees cueva
At the carnival in La Vega, DR: Artwork on the cueva, or HQ, of a group of diablos hailing from New York
Carnival, part 1: La Vega
2/5/07
Things quieted down for a few days after my Batey visit. I spent Thursday at the Centro Leon, writing things up and getting organized. On Friday, I visited Chiqui’s mom in the hospital once again, and then had several things fixed on my car: the hatch back, which wouldn’t close; a back door, which wouldn’t open; a new gas filter; a field trip to various auto parts stores in search of a new oil cap. On Saturday, I paid some more visits, first to Tonito, from my carnival group, and then to Hector and Denio, of my palos group.
Sunday was far more action-packed. Being the first Sunday of February, it was also the official start of the carnival season. And since this year I am trying to visit some different carnivals, a friend from the Centro Leon had set up a meeting for me with a member of the carnival planning committee in La Vega.
If you read my blog last year, you might remember something about the Vegan carnival, the biggest and best-funded in the land. (If you don’t remember, you can always go back and look at the February 2006 archives.) Most Dominicans seem to thing that it is a model event, one that could serve as an example to other cities’ carnivals, but I had some concerns about commercialism and participation. It seemed to me that with all the rules the carnival committee placed on participants, and with the rising costs of costumes and masks that necessitated ever more attention paid to fundraising, the Vegan carnival didn’t allow for the kind of popular participation and freedom of expression that Santiago’s did. I wanted to see for myself how the thing worked.
I arrived at the Parque Duarte, the main square in the old part of La Vega, just before noon. Although I’d been to the national park at the ruins of Old La Vega, and to Santo Cerro, a pilgrimage site just out of town, I’d never had an opportunity to look around La Vega itself. On the south side of this square I could see the Concepcion cathedral, an odd-looking modernist structure that seemed half-finished, but was actually complete. On the east side was the Ayuntamiento, or City Hall, and on the north was the Centro de la Cultura, on whose porch I decided to stand. A stall selling crafts had been set up there, and bags with wooden and bamboo beadwork, painted gourds, coconut-shell jewelry, and satchels painted with carnival devils were for sale.
A few minutes later my guide, William Gil, arrived, and we began our tour. The “carnival zone” was to the east of us, so we left my car parked on the square and headed in that direction. The sounds of carpentry were everywhere, since all the carnival groups were still busy constructing their “cuevas,” or headquarters and staging areas.
William confirmed that there had been no groups of devils before the 1980s, when “Los Siete” first formed. Today there are, he estimates, somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 groups, including Los Broncos, a group that grew out of Los Siete. Some of the groups belong to different parts of town, as in Santiago; others, like Los Magoyos, are family affairs. One, called “Los Yankees,” is made up entirely of Veganos in New York, and it was to this cueva that we went first.
The name “cave” is somewhat misleading as applied to these structures. They were really more of a patio, I commented, since they are made up of raised seating areas, a bar or refreshment stand, and some kind of shading device, all decorated with some sort of devilish theme related to the group’s costume, but mostly covered in the logos of the group’s sponsor. Each group receives not only their costumes and masks from the sponsor, but also drinks, the cueva, and even payment for their performance. Quite a contrast to what we deal with in Santiago!
In spite of the rampant commercialism, there is still a lot of creativity in display. Instead of simply putting up a tent-like shelter from the sun, like the others, one group had strung up a net and festooned it with white umbrellas. They also had a giant tower, about 30 feet high, featuring the tiger head that is the emblem of Las Fieras (The Furies). One had made a castle with a devil’s head about the gate and two costumed dancing figures. But I particularly liked the Yankees, who had painted a mural of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline (post-September 11), and whose emblem was a skull wearing red, white, and blue glasses, Grateful Dead style.
We stopped to talk with a couple of members of Los Nietos. This group belonged to Soto, a semi-rural area west of town, and had chosen their name – “The Grandsons” – because they were all young boys when they started. They reported that their costumes this year had cost about 16,000 pesos ($500) and weighed about 9 pounds, without the mask.
The carnival zone covers an area of about ten blocks, packed with cuevas, stages belonging to various sponsors (I saw one for Orange wireless) and official organizations (including radio, TV, and the Ayuntamiento), food stands, and wandering vendors selling tiny versions of devils’ masks, vejigas wrapped in colorful fabrics for you to whack your friends with, whistles, drinks, and snacks. Since, William told me, things usually get going around 2 PM we thought we had better get to our seats before then if we wanted to avoid the vejigazos.
One of the things for which La Vega is most famous is the violence of its vejigazos, or whacks with an inflated pig bladder. We dole these out in Santiago as well, but in La Vega they have made several adjustments to their equipment in order to give a more painful experience. First, they put several bladders one inside of the other to make them stronger and harder. These are wrapped in fabric to make them match the costumes, and the whole thing is then attached to a rubber rod to allow for greater precision and speed. The pain they could inflict was legendary, and to be quite honest, I was scared. I wanted to enjoy carnival, but I didn’t want to suffer for it for the whole week after, and I was assured that that was how long the bruises would last.
In order to avoid this sorry fate, William made sure I was well out of the line of fire, but I discussed the problem with him.
“But why do they want to hit so hard? I don’t see what’s fun about that,” I said.
“Well, it’s a peculiarity of the veganos. It’s how we enjoy our carnival. The vejigazos make us feel happy.”
“Happy?! Why, are veganos masochists? I don’t see how pain translates into joy.”
“They say that the devils hit us in order to get rid of all the evil we’ve accumulated during the year. That’s how the vejigazos got started, centuries ago.”
“Sure, but carnival doesn’t seem particularly religious these days.”
“No, definitely not. But that’s the tradition.”
I was still confused about how a vejigazo could bring joy – until I saw my first one. There was a raised ramp in front of the Ayuntamiento stage on which we were seated, and every so often, devils would parade down it. One onlooker was standing on it talking to a friend, unaware that a devil was coming up behind him. Noticing his distraction, the devil got a running start, wound up, and WHAM! The vejiga slammed into his back with a resounding crack. The man jumped and turned around, shouting expletives at the devil as the devil danced around him. Everyone around laughed, both in amusement at his misfortune and relief that we had escaped it. It was pretty funny. “Ah, what joy!” I exclaimed. “Aha! Now you understand,” William laughed.
Still, I wasn’t eager to experience the pain myself. I’d recommend to anyone attending carnival in La Vega to keep well out of the way. There appear to be two ways to do this: either arrive early, around 1:00. and find yourself a seat on the bleachers, or pay to enjoy the VIP seating provided for a cost of from fifty to three hundred pesos ($1.50-$9) in the cuevas. There, you can enjoy beverage service, too.
Since it was only the first day of carnival, just a fraction of the groups turned out in costume, and it took them quite a while to do so. We were waiting until after three, so I took advantage of the time to ask William a few more questions. For example, I had already seen several women in devil garb; when had they started dressing up? William explained that a group called “Las Amazonas” formed entirely of women had come out in the 1990s. No one believed that they were women at first, since it had never been seen before – it was practically a taboo. After they had made the circuit of the parade route, people did believe, because they moved differently than the men and tired faster in the heavy costumes. But now that the younger generation has grown up with female devils and the women have become accustomed to the job, there is virtually no difference, and women belong to many different groups today.
I also wanted to know about the comparsas, or semi-theatrical groups who go out at carnival time dressed as things other than devils. He told me that the number of comparsas had been dramatically reduced in the past two decades. Now he estimated that there were only five, compared to 130 grupos de diablos, whereas formerly, the former had outnumbered the latter.
What had caused this dramatic reduction? I wanted to know. “Money,” he told me frankly. “Since the creation of UCAVE, the Union Carnavalesca Vegana, carnival has become a business.” With the formation of this association of groups came more money from corporate sponsors, and what they wanted were colorful, impressive, expensive-looking costumes. They wanted devils, not Indians in loincloths, or Africans with body paint, or people dressed up to look like the President – all comparsas commonly found throughout the country. What’s more, comparsas generally belong to the poor, and there was little room for them in the new scheme of things.
“So the costumes became more impressive, but the comparsas died out. You gained something only to lose something else,” I suggested. He agreed. While UCAVE didn’t discourage comparsas to participate, they didn’t exactly encourage them either, since there was no money there. Back in Santiago, I asked a friend who had studied such things who it was, exactly, who participated in the Vegan carnival these days. “The children of the rich,” he told me. So the rich become richer, and the poor poorer. Sounds familiar.
Nonetheless, there were some distinctive comparsas on display on Sunday. There were the mudmen, a bunch of barefoot kids, actually, who had covered their entire bodies with yellowish mud, including their faces, which had first been obscured by a pantyhose mask. They stalked about zombie-style, and just generally looked creepy. There was also a seven-foot-tall headless priest, and the pope riding about in a chariot pulled by a white horse: a Dominican popemobile. There were even a couple of africanos, nearly naked but slicked down with engine grease and body paint, another low-budget costume. I also saw the man riding the doll, another old standby, and a troupe of Robalagallinas, the traditional transvestive character with huge buttocks and a tattered umbrella.
The rest were devils. And having said what I needed to say about them already, now I must state that they are undeniably beautiful and impressive. They come in every possible color combination, but all have voluminous costumes made of layers upon layers of artfully cut satins, lames, and sequined fabrics studded with just a few bells – not enough to make them as heavy as ours in Santiago. The masks have grown to monstrous proportions, at least two feet tall each, molded in acrylic and painted in fluorescent and metallic colors. Most depict a grimacing devil with angry brows and fearsome fangs, sprouting horns, sculpted hair and beard, and sometimes ostrich feathers out of its head.
There are a few variations on this traditional devil face, however: some with bug eyes look like extraterrestrials borrowed from “Alien Autopsy,” occasionally with pink brains on view. One group, called “Los Zorros,” had their devils wearing a flat-topped Spanish hat. And there were a dozen King Tuts sculpted in gold and lapis colors. With between ten and fifty in each group jumping and running about, the devils make quite an impression. Yet instead of the colorful, custom-made shoes we use in Santiago, they have matching, store-bought tennis shoes, usually in colors to match the costume. They may not be as creative, but they did look comfortable.
Each group is preceded by a bevy of flag-wavers bearing their standard, and many have their own theme-songs, another benefit of sponsorship. I was a little surprised, however, to find that just like in Santiago, Veganos have no concept of traditional carnival music. William didn’t remember anything about music before the formation of devil groups in the 1980s, just as I had found with the lechones in Santiago. The groups’ official songs are likely to be electronic dance music overlaid with vocals exhorting the group, “Dame un vejigazo.” I found this particularly interesting since the Vegan politicians I’d seen talking about their carnival at the Centro Leon last year had made a big deal over the fact that they don’t allow any disco lites, the pickups mounted with speakers we use to provide music in the Santiago carnival. While I had thought their beef was with the popular music they play, apparently, it was only with the look of the thing.
So it seems that the Vegan concept of “tradition” relies solely on visuals, not on sound – and even then, significant allowances are made. Twenty-plus years ago, masks were about the same size as one’s normal face, costumes were far simpler, and one imagines, sneakers were not in evidence. And while the officials had said they were proud not to have t-shirts and baseball caps on their carnival groups, at least on this first Sunday of February, that is exactly what I saw. Many were on hand in the shirts they’d designed to represent their groups of devils this year, and in the cuevas, you could even buy one for yourself.
In conclusion, the Carnaval de la Vega is well worth seeing. The costumes are beautiful, the cuevas creative, and the audience is into it. William also tells me that it is the carnival with the most popular support, never dying out over the centuries it has been practiced, even during the repressive years of Trujillo and Balaguer. But for a folklorist, it’s a mixed bag. Every carnival in the country is different now than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, naturally. People’s creativity is everywhere in evidence in the changing costumes, masks, and, particularly, musical choices. Yet in La Vega, the conflict between the maintenance of tradition and the drive to commercialize and cater to tourism is particularly in evidence. So go and see La Vega, but try to catch another as well – Cotui, Salcedo, or good old Santiago – in order to see what happens when regular folks are able to make their own decisions about carnival.
Things quieted down for a few days after my Batey visit. I spent Thursday at the Centro Leon, writing things up and getting organized. On Friday, I visited Chiqui’s mom in the hospital once again, and then had several things fixed on my car: the hatch back, which wouldn’t close; a back door, which wouldn’t open; a new gas filter; a field trip to various auto parts stores in search of a new oil cap. On Saturday, I paid some more visits, first to Tonito, from my carnival group, and then to Hector and Denio, of my palos group.
Sunday was far more action-packed. Being the first Sunday of February, it was also the official start of the carnival season. And since this year I am trying to visit some different carnivals, a friend from the Centro Leon had set up a meeting for me with a member of the carnival planning committee in La Vega.
If you read my blog last year, you might remember something about the Vegan carnival, the biggest and best-funded in the land. (If you don’t remember, you can always go back and look at the February 2006 archives.) Most Dominicans seem to thing that it is a model event, one that could serve as an example to other cities’ carnivals, but I had some concerns about commercialism and participation. It seemed to me that with all the rules the carnival committee placed on participants, and with the rising costs of costumes and masks that necessitated ever more attention paid to fundraising, the Vegan carnival didn’t allow for the kind of popular participation and freedom of expression that Santiago’s did. I wanted to see for myself how the thing worked.
I arrived at the Parque Duarte, the main square in the old part of La Vega, just before noon. Although I’d been to the national park at the ruins of Old La Vega, and to Santo Cerro, a pilgrimage site just out of town, I’d never had an opportunity to look around La Vega itself. On the south side of this square I could see the Concepcion cathedral, an odd-looking modernist structure that seemed half-finished, but was actually complete. On the east side was the Ayuntamiento, or City Hall, and on the north was the Centro de la Cultura, on whose porch I decided to stand. A stall selling crafts had been set up there, and bags with wooden and bamboo beadwork, painted gourds, coconut-shell jewelry, and satchels painted with carnival devils were for sale.
A few minutes later my guide, William Gil, arrived, and we began our tour. The “carnival zone” was to the east of us, so we left my car parked on the square and headed in that direction. The sounds of carpentry were everywhere, since all the carnival groups were still busy constructing their “cuevas,” or headquarters and staging areas.
William confirmed that there had been no groups of devils before the 1980s, when “Los Siete” first formed. Today there are, he estimates, somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 groups, including Los Broncos, a group that grew out of Los Siete. Some of the groups belong to different parts of town, as in Santiago; others, like Los Magoyos, are family affairs. One, called “Los Yankees,” is made up entirely of Veganos in New York, and it was to this cueva that we went first.
The name “cave” is somewhat misleading as applied to these structures. They were really more of a patio, I commented, since they are made up of raised seating areas, a bar or refreshment stand, and some kind of shading device, all decorated with some sort of devilish theme related to the group’s costume, but mostly covered in the logos of the group’s sponsor. Each group receives not only their costumes and masks from the sponsor, but also drinks, the cueva, and even payment for their performance. Quite a contrast to what we deal with in Santiago!
In spite of the rampant commercialism, there is still a lot of creativity in display. Instead of simply putting up a tent-like shelter from the sun, like the others, one group had strung up a net and festooned it with white umbrellas. They also had a giant tower, about 30 feet high, featuring the tiger head that is the emblem of Las Fieras (The Furies). One had made a castle with a devil’s head about the gate and two costumed dancing figures. But I particularly liked the Yankees, who had painted a mural of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline (post-September 11), and whose emblem was a skull wearing red, white, and blue glasses, Grateful Dead style.
We stopped to talk with a couple of members of Los Nietos. This group belonged to Soto, a semi-rural area west of town, and had chosen their name – “The Grandsons” – because they were all young boys when they started. They reported that their costumes this year had cost about 16,000 pesos ($500) and weighed about 9 pounds, without the mask.
The carnival zone covers an area of about ten blocks, packed with cuevas, stages belonging to various sponsors (I saw one for Orange wireless) and official organizations (including radio, TV, and the Ayuntamiento), food stands, and wandering vendors selling tiny versions of devils’ masks, vejigas wrapped in colorful fabrics for you to whack your friends with, whistles, drinks, and snacks. Since, William told me, things usually get going around 2 PM we thought we had better get to our seats before then if we wanted to avoid the vejigazos.
One of the things for which La Vega is most famous is the violence of its vejigazos, or whacks with an inflated pig bladder. We dole these out in Santiago as well, but in La Vega they have made several adjustments to their equipment in order to give a more painful experience. First, they put several bladders one inside of the other to make them stronger and harder. These are wrapped in fabric to make them match the costumes, and the whole thing is then attached to a rubber rod to allow for greater precision and speed. The pain they could inflict was legendary, and to be quite honest, I was scared. I wanted to enjoy carnival, but I didn’t want to suffer for it for the whole week after, and I was assured that that was how long the bruises would last.
In order to avoid this sorry fate, William made sure I was well out of the line of fire, but I discussed the problem with him.
“But why do they want to hit so hard? I don’t see what’s fun about that,” I said.
“Well, it’s a peculiarity of the veganos. It’s how we enjoy our carnival. The vejigazos make us feel happy.”
“Happy?! Why, are veganos masochists? I don’t see how pain translates into joy.”
“They say that the devils hit us in order to get rid of all the evil we’ve accumulated during the year. That’s how the vejigazos got started, centuries ago.”
“Sure, but carnival doesn’t seem particularly religious these days.”
“No, definitely not. But that’s the tradition.”
I was still confused about how a vejigazo could bring joy – until I saw my first one. There was a raised ramp in front of the Ayuntamiento stage on which we were seated, and every so often, devils would parade down it. One onlooker was standing on it talking to a friend, unaware that a devil was coming up behind him. Noticing his distraction, the devil got a running start, wound up, and WHAM! The vejiga slammed into his back with a resounding crack. The man jumped and turned around, shouting expletives at the devil as the devil danced around him. Everyone around laughed, both in amusement at his misfortune and relief that we had escaped it. It was pretty funny. “Ah, what joy!” I exclaimed. “Aha! Now you understand,” William laughed.
Still, I wasn’t eager to experience the pain myself. I’d recommend to anyone attending carnival in La Vega to keep well out of the way. There appear to be two ways to do this: either arrive early, around 1:00. and find yourself a seat on the bleachers, or pay to enjoy the VIP seating provided for a cost of from fifty to three hundred pesos ($1.50-$9) in the cuevas. There, you can enjoy beverage service, too.
Since it was only the first day of carnival, just a fraction of the groups turned out in costume, and it took them quite a while to do so. We were waiting until after three, so I took advantage of the time to ask William a few more questions. For example, I had already seen several women in devil garb; when had they started dressing up? William explained that a group called “Las Amazonas” formed entirely of women had come out in the 1990s. No one believed that they were women at first, since it had never been seen before – it was practically a taboo. After they had made the circuit of the parade route, people did believe, because they moved differently than the men and tired faster in the heavy costumes. But now that the younger generation has grown up with female devils and the women have become accustomed to the job, there is virtually no difference, and women belong to many different groups today.
I also wanted to know about the comparsas, or semi-theatrical groups who go out at carnival time dressed as things other than devils. He told me that the number of comparsas had been dramatically reduced in the past two decades. Now he estimated that there were only five, compared to 130 grupos de diablos, whereas formerly, the former had outnumbered the latter.
What had caused this dramatic reduction? I wanted to know. “Money,” he told me frankly. “Since the creation of UCAVE, the Union Carnavalesca Vegana, carnival has become a business.” With the formation of this association of groups came more money from corporate sponsors, and what they wanted were colorful, impressive, expensive-looking costumes. They wanted devils, not Indians in loincloths, or Africans with body paint, or people dressed up to look like the President – all comparsas commonly found throughout the country. What’s more, comparsas generally belong to the poor, and there was little room for them in the new scheme of things.
“So the costumes became more impressive, but the comparsas died out. You gained something only to lose something else,” I suggested. He agreed. While UCAVE didn’t discourage comparsas to participate, they didn’t exactly encourage them either, since there was no money there. Back in Santiago, I asked a friend who had studied such things who it was, exactly, who participated in the Vegan carnival these days. “The children of the rich,” he told me. So the rich become richer, and the poor poorer. Sounds familiar.
Nonetheless, there were some distinctive comparsas on display on Sunday. There were the mudmen, a bunch of barefoot kids, actually, who had covered their entire bodies with yellowish mud, including their faces, which had first been obscured by a pantyhose mask. They stalked about zombie-style, and just generally looked creepy. There was also a seven-foot-tall headless priest, and the pope riding about in a chariot pulled by a white horse: a Dominican popemobile. There were even a couple of africanos, nearly naked but slicked down with engine grease and body paint, another low-budget costume. I also saw the man riding the doll, another old standby, and a troupe of Robalagallinas, the traditional transvestive character with huge buttocks and a tattered umbrella.
The rest were devils. And having said what I needed to say about them already, now I must state that they are undeniably beautiful and impressive. They come in every possible color combination, but all have voluminous costumes made of layers upon layers of artfully cut satins, lames, and sequined fabrics studded with just a few bells – not enough to make them as heavy as ours in Santiago. The masks have grown to monstrous proportions, at least two feet tall each, molded in acrylic and painted in fluorescent and metallic colors. Most depict a grimacing devil with angry brows and fearsome fangs, sprouting horns, sculpted hair and beard, and sometimes ostrich feathers out of its head.
There are a few variations on this traditional devil face, however: some with bug eyes look like extraterrestrials borrowed from “Alien Autopsy,” occasionally with pink brains on view. One group, called “Los Zorros,” had their devils wearing a flat-topped Spanish hat. And there were a dozen King Tuts sculpted in gold and lapis colors. With between ten and fifty in each group jumping and running about, the devils make quite an impression. Yet instead of the colorful, custom-made shoes we use in Santiago, they have matching, store-bought tennis shoes, usually in colors to match the costume. They may not be as creative, but they did look comfortable.
Each group is preceded by a bevy of flag-wavers bearing their standard, and many have their own theme-songs, another benefit of sponsorship. I was a little surprised, however, to find that just like in Santiago, Veganos have no concept of traditional carnival music. William didn’t remember anything about music before the formation of devil groups in the 1980s, just as I had found with the lechones in Santiago. The groups’ official songs are likely to be electronic dance music overlaid with vocals exhorting the group, “Dame un vejigazo.” I found this particularly interesting since the Vegan politicians I’d seen talking about their carnival at the Centro Leon last year had made a big deal over the fact that they don’t allow any disco lites, the pickups mounted with speakers we use to provide music in the Santiago carnival. While I had thought their beef was with the popular music they play, apparently, it was only with the look of the thing.
So it seems that the Vegan concept of “tradition” relies solely on visuals, not on sound – and even then, significant allowances are made. Twenty-plus years ago, masks were about the same size as one’s normal face, costumes were far simpler, and one imagines, sneakers were not in evidence. And while the officials had said they were proud not to have t-shirts and baseball caps on their carnival groups, at least on this first Sunday of February, that is exactly what I saw. Many were on hand in the shirts they’d designed to represent their groups of devils this year, and in the cuevas, you could even buy one for yourself.
In conclusion, the Carnaval de la Vega is well worth seeing. The costumes are beautiful, the cuevas creative, and the audience is into it. William also tells me that it is the carnival with the most popular support, never dying out over the centuries it has been practiced, even during the repressive years of Trujillo and Balaguer. But for a folklorist, it’s a mixed bag. Every carnival in the country is different now than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, naturally. People’s creativity is everywhere in evidence in the changing costumes, masks, and, particularly, musical choices. Yet in La Vega, the conflict between the maintenance of tradition and the drive to commercialize and cater to tourism is particularly in evidence. So go and see La Vega, but try to catch another as well – Cotui, Salcedo, or good old Santiago – in order to see what happens when regular folks are able to make their own decisions about carnival.
Kids
These kids who live on Batey Libertad badly wanted their picture taken. Digital cameras are great!
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Back in action!
Once again, I chose the appropriate moment to make a grand entrance back into Santiago life. As the plane made its final approach last Friday, I saw the monument was all dressed up in a new set of patriotic red, blue, and white lights; I also noticed that the Estadio Cibao was all lit up, so a baseball game must have been going on.
Jon, the visiting professor from the University of Vermont to whom I’d loaned my car, picked me up in my own vehicle. His son had renamed it “The Millenium Falcon” in my absence, and I thoroughly approved of the name. I dropped him off at home and met the rest of the family, then hurried back to my old abode, since it was already past 10 PM. On the way home, I noticed that all those buzzy plastic horns I’d become so familiar with last baseball season were back in full force. Same car, same apartment, same ruckus – it was almost like I never left.
Almost, but not quite: Doña Ana met me at my car and showed me around the apartment again. The mosquito escape route was still operational, but she told me the old green-light water system was no longer needed, new ruffled toilet-seat covers had been sewn, and also the furniture had been rearranged. More importantly, I found out that the final game of the playoffs was what I’d seen in progress at the baseball stadium, and the Aguilas, the local Santiago team, was going to win: it was the seventh inning and they were ahead 10-1 over their archrivals, Los Tigres de Licey. Last year, I’d seen the Tigres beat the Aguilas on their way to winning the 2006 title, but like I say, things are different around here this year.
Don Rafael informed me that the impending Aguilas win meant that, very shortly, all kinds of inclement noises would occur, and no one would get much sleep. Sure enough, as I lay on my bed with my hand in the air, applying pressure to the thumb I’d just sliced open while trying to cut open a box of juice, fireworks started going off and shots were fired into the air, music played, and horns honked. But after a 4:30 AM wake-up call, three flights, twelve hours of travel, and completely jacked up on decongestants, I felt like I could sleep through anything, and I pretty much did.
Since then, it’s been mostly what you would expect: paying visits to friends, and getting back into this other way of life. The slower pace, the frightening traffic, the heat. The replacement of handicapped parking spaces with “I’m Going to be a Mother” spaces. A few things have changed besides the arrangement of my furniture: parties start and end earlier because of new cabaret laws. There are parking meters downtown where once there was only chaos. They put up a bunch of signs in a probably vain attempt to keep people from driving the wrong way on the one-way streets in my neighborhood.
Here’s what happens when you’ve been away from here for seven months and then you come back for a three-month stay. 1) Everyone says, “Why so short?” 2) Everyone says, “You look fatter!” (I haven’t changed in weight at all, but I realize that it’s supposed to be a compliment. Flesh is valued here.)
So far, I’ve visited the Taveras family (Chiqui, Laura, and all), the Roman family (Rafaelito, Carmen, and all), and my friends at the Centro Leon. Everyone says, “nothing’s new here,” but it’s not precisely true. Besides what I’ve mentioned, Chiqui went to New York for the first time and returned just two weeks before I arrived. He came back with a few more words of English and a picture of himself with a very lifelike wax statue of Morgan Freeman. His mother had a stroke and was brought to a hospital here in Santiago where we all went to see her. Rafaelito has more students than ever, and Carmen lost a lot of weight. At the Centro Leon, Angela went back to New York, Zoraya has nearly finished her Master’s, and everyone is hard at work on the upcoming conference.
I still have many more visits to make, but first, I had to make some arrangements. My agenda for this trip is different from those past. I’ve already got more interviews for my dissertation than I know what to do with, or am able to transcribe, so I’m going to (a) hire a transcriber and (b) take a vacation from interviews. Instead, I’m going to try to get some comparative information as well as experience some different parts of the country.
First, since this is carnival month, I’m planning on visiting some of the different carnivals in various Cibaeno towns. Last year, when I was busy participating in carnival with my group of lechones, I was only able to see the event here in Santiago and I didn’t have much opportunity to document the experience with photographs or video. This year, while I still want to hit the streets with Los Confraternos, I also want to see the better-known carnival in La Vega as well as some others with unique costumes and practices, such as perhaps Cotui, Salcedo, or Puerto Plata.
Second, I want to get a little bit more activist and spend some time on the bateyes. A batey is a government settlement for agricultural workers, usually those who undertake the difficult sugar cane harvest. Many batey-dwellers are Dominico-Haitians or even Haitian immigrants (many illegal), and they form the poorest segment of the population here. Last year, I visited a batey in Barahona during holy week in order to hear some ga-ga music (you can see it on this blog under April 2006). Now, I want to see how conditions are on bateyes here in the north, see what kind of musical activity goes on there, and perhaps lend a helping hand with some projects.
That’s why I got in touch with Jon of the University of Vermont, who along with his wife Pat is running a program on Batey Libertad northwest of Santiago. Run through GrassRoots Soccer, a group that works mostly in Africa, the program combines soccer training with HIV/AIDS education. The batey’s team competes with others in the region in order to create opportunities for the batey residents to interact positively with other Dominicans and help eliminate racism. The project has also built a multi-purpose room where classes are held and a medical clinic on the batey.
On Wednesday I got my first opportunity to accompany Jon out to Batey Libertad. I met him and two young men who work with the soccer program, Yanlico and Rafo, at the house he is renting in La Zurza (near where I lived my first year here). He had been sad to see the Falcon go, but luckily had been able to purchase his own bucket of bolts, temporarily named “Red-riguez,” from El Negro just a day before I arrived. A little nicer than the Falcon but without quite so much character, it nevertheless did a fine job of carting the four of us out of town, past Navarrete, Esperanza, and the middle-of-nowhere settlement simply called “Km. 10” to the batey.
Batey Libertad is much smaller than the one I’d seen in the south, but still has a population of nearly 2000. It was originally constructed during the Trujillo era to house sugar cane workers, but the cane is now gone: today, these people work in the rice fields that line the highway along here. They are beautiful and impossibly green, but full of pests and fungi that spread nasty parasites, skin diseases, and respiratory infections among the workers. The work is hot and can be painful, but it is still a draw for many Haitians who have no work at all.
The settlement itself consists of clusters of houses made of materials ranging from rusted-out corrugated tin to newly plastered and painted cinder block, so close together that cars can’t pass through most of its dusty roads. There are two round shelters with thatched roofs and concrete floors that can be used for gaming, and five small concrete water towers on stilts, all empty. Rafo tells me that a community upstream from them has usurped their water supply, and now they have to cross the highway to fetch it from the rice plant. When the plant is closed and locked, they take it out of the drainage ditch that catches the pesticide-filled runoff from the fields. For sanitation, there are a handful of outhouses all in a row: Rafo calls it the Barrio de las Letrinas. One of the stalls used to hold a communal shower, but now, of course, it’s out of order.
There are a few more landmarks to see here: two Trujillo-era buildings still stand, long, low concrete buildings divided into separate apartments, where workers used to sleep twenty to a room in hammocks. A concrete slab with a basketless hoop at one end provides some entertainment, though perhaps not as much as the dirt soccer field that lies just outside the settlement. There is an internet center (one of Jon’s endeavors), denoted by a nicely-painted desktop computer on its yellow wall. Tobacco dries in two places: the green leaves hang outside under a shelter, those farther along in the aging process dry inside a wooden house, its shutters open to reveal the somewhat surreal scene inside. Sheep, cows, and chickens stroll the open area between Latrine town and the soccer field.
Then there is the lair of Casco Pelao (bald head), the local voodoo doctor. His consulting office is decorated with a painting of San Miguel in angel form floating over the doorway, accompanied by a legend informing would-be patients that their search ends here, for the low low price of 57 pesos and a bottle of rum. Next door is the peristyle, a building designed for voodoo ceremonies, with its all-important centerpost and colorful paper and plastic flags hanging from the ceiling. On the other side of the batey is his home, painted with the full-size image of a hatted man with crosses in his eyes and a bone necklace; here, the deity Guede guards the doorway. Casco Pelao’s home actually takes up only half the building, the other half is a dormitory where his patients may sleep peacefully, free from evil influences. Besides medicine, Casco Pelao also provides entertainment. On weekends, he converts the peristyle into a disco for the benefit of local youth (and a small entrance fee).
Casco Pelao was not around at the moment. Instead, we met with Papito, who serves as mayor of the batey and the head of a very accomplished family: his sons are now studying medicine and law at the technical university in Santiago. We pulled up a couple of chairs in the shade between the houses to chat, and were soon swamped by children. Some were playing a version of hopscotch they’d drawn using coal scavenged from cooking fires. Some were getting their hair combed, another was taking a bath in a washtub – the school around the corner, which goes up to fifth grade, had just broken for lunch. Before long, we got our own, prepared by Papito’s wife in the communal kitchen: rice, spaghetti, fried chicken (for those who eat such things), and a bottle of Red Rock, the soda that tastes like red.
Chatting with Milanda, one of the soccer trainers, I found out that Batey Libertad had once had a ga-ga but its leader had moved away; a típico musician used to live here, too, but now he lived and worked in Santiago. These days, most musical activity around here was recorded. Indeed, today there was electricity, and people were taking advantage of it to listen to típico, reggaeton, and bachata. On the weekends, when the power supply permits, the kids have dances where Haitian konpa and Dominican bachata are the favored sounds. But there are plenty of drummers here who provide Casco Pelao with necessary ceremonial music. November and December are the big months for voodoo ceremonies here, I’m told, but those who wish for one to be performed especially for them can pay to obtain this service, and Jon will be doing so in March when his student group comes down. Most interestingly, Milanda told me that just this past weekend, a ga-ga group appeared in the batey to play for tips. They had come down from “la loma,” the hills, an indefinite spot to be sure, but likely to refer to one of the coffee plantations in the mountains that separate Navarrete from the coast. This could be something to investigate.
After lunch, we headed to the recently-constructed community building, where Yanlico was in the midst of leading an education session with this year’s Grassroots Soccer trainees. It was the first time this part of the curriculum had been tried out here, recently translated from English to Spanish, and results were mixed. Today’s activity was a game called, “where do I stand?” and it was a means of getting the kids to talk about their beliefs and opinions about sex. Yanlico would read a statement from the book, and the students would decide where they stood on it by going to either the “agree” side of the room or the “disagree” side, or staying somewhere in between. We soon realized there was a problem with understanding double negatives – i.e. those who disagreed with a negative statement often stood on the “agree” side, as they were thinking that made it a positive statement. In spite of the confusion, though, the goal of talking about their opinions was reached. The second game was a game of limbo, where the pole with a sign marked “sex” hanging from it was progressively lowered as a symbol of the increased peer pressure one can expect at increasing ages. This game was particularly popular and amusing, although as Jon remarked, it was a bit fatalistic: sooner or later, the sex was going to hit you. The meeting concluded with a snack (a way to ensure attendance as well as provide needed calories) and we returned to Papito’s.
The short time remaining in the afternoon was occupied by (a) playing with the community dog, Rey, and (b), much less fun, accomplishing the errand of making photocopies of a poster inviting batey residents to the Grassroots graduation ceremony this weekend. This took about two hours of running around the congested and polluted streets of Esperanza, since we had to try two different Internet centers and three copy stores before we found functional printers and copiers. After that, it was back to Santiago as the bright red sun set behind the emerald rice paddies while men on horses and pedestrians with machetes headed for home.
Jon, the visiting professor from the University of Vermont to whom I’d loaned my car, picked me up in my own vehicle. His son had renamed it “The Millenium Falcon” in my absence, and I thoroughly approved of the name. I dropped him off at home and met the rest of the family, then hurried back to my old abode, since it was already past 10 PM. On the way home, I noticed that all those buzzy plastic horns I’d become so familiar with last baseball season were back in full force. Same car, same apartment, same ruckus – it was almost like I never left.
Almost, but not quite: Doña Ana met me at my car and showed me around the apartment again. The mosquito escape route was still operational, but she told me the old green-light water system was no longer needed, new ruffled toilet-seat covers had been sewn, and also the furniture had been rearranged. More importantly, I found out that the final game of the playoffs was what I’d seen in progress at the baseball stadium, and the Aguilas, the local Santiago team, was going to win: it was the seventh inning and they were ahead 10-1 over their archrivals, Los Tigres de Licey. Last year, I’d seen the Tigres beat the Aguilas on their way to winning the 2006 title, but like I say, things are different around here this year.
Don Rafael informed me that the impending Aguilas win meant that, very shortly, all kinds of inclement noises would occur, and no one would get much sleep. Sure enough, as I lay on my bed with my hand in the air, applying pressure to the thumb I’d just sliced open while trying to cut open a box of juice, fireworks started going off and shots were fired into the air, music played, and horns honked. But after a 4:30 AM wake-up call, three flights, twelve hours of travel, and completely jacked up on decongestants, I felt like I could sleep through anything, and I pretty much did.
Since then, it’s been mostly what you would expect: paying visits to friends, and getting back into this other way of life. The slower pace, the frightening traffic, the heat. The replacement of handicapped parking spaces with “I’m Going to be a Mother” spaces. A few things have changed besides the arrangement of my furniture: parties start and end earlier because of new cabaret laws. There are parking meters downtown where once there was only chaos. They put up a bunch of signs in a probably vain attempt to keep people from driving the wrong way on the one-way streets in my neighborhood.
Here’s what happens when you’ve been away from here for seven months and then you come back for a three-month stay. 1) Everyone says, “Why so short?” 2) Everyone says, “You look fatter!” (I haven’t changed in weight at all, but I realize that it’s supposed to be a compliment. Flesh is valued here.)
So far, I’ve visited the Taveras family (Chiqui, Laura, and all), the Roman family (Rafaelito, Carmen, and all), and my friends at the Centro Leon. Everyone says, “nothing’s new here,” but it’s not precisely true. Besides what I’ve mentioned, Chiqui went to New York for the first time and returned just two weeks before I arrived. He came back with a few more words of English and a picture of himself with a very lifelike wax statue of Morgan Freeman. His mother had a stroke and was brought to a hospital here in Santiago where we all went to see her. Rafaelito has more students than ever, and Carmen lost a lot of weight. At the Centro Leon, Angela went back to New York, Zoraya has nearly finished her Master’s, and everyone is hard at work on the upcoming conference.
I still have many more visits to make, but first, I had to make some arrangements. My agenda for this trip is different from those past. I’ve already got more interviews for my dissertation than I know what to do with, or am able to transcribe, so I’m going to (a) hire a transcriber and (b) take a vacation from interviews. Instead, I’m going to try to get some comparative information as well as experience some different parts of the country.
First, since this is carnival month, I’m planning on visiting some of the different carnivals in various Cibaeno towns. Last year, when I was busy participating in carnival with my group of lechones, I was only able to see the event here in Santiago and I didn’t have much opportunity to document the experience with photographs or video. This year, while I still want to hit the streets with Los Confraternos, I also want to see the better-known carnival in La Vega as well as some others with unique costumes and practices, such as perhaps Cotui, Salcedo, or Puerto Plata.
Second, I want to get a little bit more activist and spend some time on the bateyes. A batey is a government settlement for agricultural workers, usually those who undertake the difficult sugar cane harvest. Many batey-dwellers are Dominico-Haitians or even Haitian immigrants (many illegal), and they form the poorest segment of the population here. Last year, I visited a batey in Barahona during holy week in order to hear some ga-ga music (you can see it on this blog under April 2006). Now, I want to see how conditions are on bateyes here in the north, see what kind of musical activity goes on there, and perhaps lend a helping hand with some projects.
That’s why I got in touch with Jon of the University of Vermont, who along with his wife Pat is running a program on Batey Libertad northwest of Santiago. Run through GrassRoots Soccer, a group that works mostly in Africa, the program combines soccer training with HIV/AIDS education. The batey’s team competes with others in the region in order to create opportunities for the batey residents to interact positively with other Dominicans and help eliminate racism. The project has also built a multi-purpose room where classes are held and a medical clinic on the batey.
On Wednesday I got my first opportunity to accompany Jon out to Batey Libertad. I met him and two young men who work with the soccer program, Yanlico and Rafo, at the house he is renting in La Zurza (near where I lived my first year here). He had been sad to see the Falcon go, but luckily had been able to purchase his own bucket of bolts, temporarily named “Red-riguez,” from El Negro just a day before I arrived. A little nicer than the Falcon but without quite so much character, it nevertheless did a fine job of carting the four of us out of town, past Navarrete, Esperanza, and the middle-of-nowhere settlement simply called “Km. 10” to the batey.
Batey Libertad is much smaller than the one I’d seen in the south, but still has a population of nearly 2000. It was originally constructed during the Trujillo era to house sugar cane workers, but the cane is now gone: today, these people work in the rice fields that line the highway along here. They are beautiful and impossibly green, but full of pests and fungi that spread nasty parasites, skin diseases, and respiratory infections among the workers. The work is hot and can be painful, but it is still a draw for many Haitians who have no work at all.
The settlement itself consists of clusters of houses made of materials ranging from rusted-out corrugated tin to newly plastered and painted cinder block, so close together that cars can’t pass through most of its dusty roads. There are two round shelters with thatched roofs and concrete floors that can be used for gaming, and five small concrete water towers on stilts, all empty. Rafo tells me that a community upstream from them has usurped their water supply, and now they have to cross the highway to fetch it from the rice plant. When the plant is closed and locked, they take it out of the drainage ditch that catches the pesticide-filled runoff from the fields. For sanitation, there are a handful of outhouses all in a row: Rafo calls it the Barrio de las Letrinas. One of the stalls used to hold a communal shower, but now, of course, it’s out of order.
There are a few more landmarks to see here: two Trujillo-era buildings still stand, long, low concrete buildings divided into separate apartments, where workers used to sleep twenty to a room in hammocks. A concrete slab with a basketless hoop at one end provides some entertainment, though perhaps not as much as the dirt soccer field that lies just outside the settlement. There is an internet center (one of Jon’s endeavors), denoted by a nicely-painted desktop computer on its yellow wall. Tobacco dries in two places: the green leaves hang outside under a shelter, those farther along in the aging process dry inside a wooden house, its shutters open to reveal the somewhat surreal scene inside. Sheep, cows, and chickens stroll the open area between Latrine town and the soccer field.
Then there is the lair of Casco Pelao (bald head), the local voodoo doctor. His consulting office is decorated with a painting of San Miguel in angel form floating over the doorway, accompanied by a legend informing would-be patients that their search ends here, for the low low price of 57 pesos and a bottle of rum. Next door is the peristyle, a building designed for voodoo ceremonies, with its all-important centerpost and colorful paper and plastic flags hanging from the ceiling. On the other side of the batey is his home, painted with the full-size image of a hatted man with crosses in his eyes and a bone necklace; here, the deity Guede guards the doorway. Casco Pelao’s home actually takes up only half the building, the other half is a dormitory where his patients may sleep peacefully, free from evil influences. Besides medicine, Casco Pelao also provides entertainment. On weekends, he converts the peristyle into a disco for the benefit of local youth (and a small entrance fee).
Casco Pelao was not around at the moment. Instead, we met with Papito, who serves as mayor of the batey and the head of a very accomplished family: his sons are now studying medicine and law at the technical university in Santiago. We pulled up a couple of chairs in the shade between the houses to chat, and were soon swamped by children. Some were playing a version of hopscotch they’d drawn using coal scavenged from cooking fires. Some were getting their hair combed, another was taking a bath in a washtub – the school around the corner, which goes up to fifth grade, had just broken for lunch. Before long, we got our own, prepared by Papito’s wife in the communal kitchen: rice, spaghetti, fried chicken (for those who eat such things), and a bottle of Red Rock, the soda that tastes like red.
Chatting with Milanda, one of the soccer trainers, I found out that Batey Libertad had once had a ga-ga but its leader had moved away; a típico musician used to live here, too, but now he lived and worked in Santiago. These days, most musical activity around here was recorded. Indeed, today there was electricity, and people were taking advantage of it to listen to típico, reggaeton, and bachata. On the weekends, when the power supply permits, the kids have dances where Haitian konpa and Dominican bachata are the favored sounds. But there are plenty of drummers here who provide Casco Pelao with necessary ceremonial music. November and December are the big months for voodoo ceremonies here, I’m told, but those who wish for one to be performed especially for them can pay to obtain this service, and Jon will be doing so in March when his student group comes down. Most interestingly, Milanda told me that just this past weekend, a ga-ga group appeared in the batey to play for tips. They had come down from “la loma,” the hills, an indefinite spot to be sure, but likely to refer to one of the coffee plantations in the mountains that separate Navarrete from the coast. This could be something to investigate.
After lunch, we headed to the recently-constructed community building, where Yanlico was in the midst of leading an education session with this year’s Grassroots Soccer trainees. It was the first time this part of the curriculum had been tried out here, recently translated from English to Spanish, and results were mixed. Today’s activity was a game called, “where do I stand?” and it was a means of getting the kids to talk about their beliefs and opinions about sex. Yanlico would read a statement from the book, and the students would decide where they stood on it by going to either the “agree” side of the room or the “disagree” side, or staying somewhere in between. We soon realized there was a problem with understanding double negatives – i.e. those who disagreed with a negative statement often stood on the “agree” side, as they were thinking that made it a positive statement. In spite of the confusion, though, the goal of talking about their opinions was reached. The second game was a game of limbo, where the pole with a sign marked “sex” hanging from it was progressively lowered as a symbol of the increased peer pressure one can expect at increasing ages. This game was particularly popular and amusing, although as Jon remarked, it was a bit fatalistic: sooner or later, the sex was going to hit you. The meeting concluded with a snack (a way to ensure attendance as well as provide needed calories) and we returned to Papito’s.
The short time remaining in the afternoon was occupied by (a) playing with the community dog, Rey, and (b), much less fun, accomplishing the errand of making photocopies of a poster inviting batey residents to the Grassroots graduation ceremony this weekend. This took about two hours of running around the congested and polluted streets of Esperanza, since we had to try two different Internet centers and three copy stores before we found functional printers and copiers. After that, it was back to Santiago as the bright red sun set behind the emerald rice paddies while men on horses and pedestrians with machetes headed for home.
Friday, January 12, 2007
El Prodigio y yo
Picture taken by Jose Enrique Tavarez at the Centro Leon last year, and just dug up by me.
Back in Action
Hey, you don't have to tell ME it's been a while! Where have I been? well, I went to California to see the grandparents for Thanksgiving, I went to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, for a few days after Christmas. Between trips, I was working on the old dissertation (nearly three chapters done now), in part while in residence at a local writer's colony, Casa Libre en la Solana. They are awesome!! Send them your money!!
Since the holidays, things have been decidedly less interesting. I've been spending rather an inordinate amount of time working on the index for my forthcoming book
(take a look here: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1801.htm). And an even more ridiculous amount of time preparing for my upcoming trip. Yes, I'm heading back to Santiago for more carnival, more accordion, and more Brugal in just two weeks.
BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR ME?? you may be asking yourself. Good question. If you are my friend, perhaps it means you should be checking plane fare to the DR in order to pay me a visit. Don't forget: carnival season runs through February, and whale season ends March 15. If you are a blog reader who is not yet my friend, perhaps it means you should subscribe to my feed so you don't miss a single exciting installment of my adventures in The Republic, as my nephew has been known to call it. Either way, keep in mind that I will arrive in La Ciudad Corazon on January 26 and will be blogging away shortly thereafter.
To tide you over in the meantime, here's a photo I just dug up of me and El Prodigio, taken by Jose Enrique Tavarez at the Centro Leon.
Since the holidays, things have been decidedly less interesting. I've been spending rather an inordinate amount of time working on the index for my forthcoming book
(take a look here: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1801.htm). And an even more ridiculous amount of time preparing for my upcoming trip. Yes, I'm heading back to Santiago for more carnival, more accordion, and more Brugal in just two weeks.
BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR ME?? you may be asking yourself. Good question. If you are my friend, perhaps it means you should be checking plane fare to the DR in order to pay me a visit. Don't forget: carnival season runs through February, and whale season ends March 15. If you are a blog reader who is not yet my friend, perhaps it means you should subscribe to my feed so you don't miss a single exciting installment of my adventures in The Republic, as my nephew has been known to call it. Either way, keep in mind that I will arrive in La Ciudad Corazon on January 26 and will be blogging away shortly thereafter.
To tide you over in the meantime, here's a photo I just dug up of me and El Prodigio, taken by Jose Enrique Tavarez at the Centro Leon.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Talking tiguere
Recently, I’ve been traveling again. I was at a conference in Phoenix, I had Thanksgiving with family in Riverside, California, and most excitingly, I was in Hawaii. It was also for a conference but I was, sadly, forced to ditch some of the proceedings to hang out on the beach instead. I’ve put a couple of pictures from that trip below for you to enjoy.
At the moment, I’m temporarily residing in a writers’ colony right here in called Casa Libre en la Solana (http://www.casalibre.org/). It’s a great place and I’m getting a lot done. I’m going to be very sad when I have to leave my cute little apartment here next week! Anyway, lately I’ve been writing about gender roles in the DR, particularly that of the tíguere. So here, for you, readers, is a moment of diversion with the tíguere.
Literally, tíguere is simply the peculiarly Dominican pronunciation of the word for “tiger.” But it also refers to a type of man in the DR – a hustler, a master of the street, a sharp dresser, and a tough guy. The tíguere arose along with the urbanization of the country, having first emerged in Santo Domingo around the 1920s. Porfirio Rubirosa, the famous 1950s playboy, and even Trujillo himself are classic tígueres. Today, tigueraje (the behavior or the domain of the tíguere) is a homegrown Dominican youth culture with its own style of dress, music (these days, usually reggaetón and/or “merengues de la calle”), and language.
I came across a recent article in Hoy newspaper that spoke about how the vocabulary of tigueraje is showing up everywhere now, even in the upper classes, among educated people, and high-ranking politicians. The article also gives a list of current expressions. Here are some of them, translated into both idiomatic and literal English. (I changed some of the definitions from the article that were incorrect.)
Tumba eso = forget it (lit. knock it over)
Ponte cloro = be clear (lit. “light”); tell the truth (lit. put bleach on yourself)
¿Quién te cotiza? = Who puts up with your craziness? (Who pays you?)
Te guayaste = You messed up (you grated yourself)
Te subí “lo vidrio” = I’m not listening to you (I rolled up the windows on you)
Te la comiste = You messed up – or were awesome, depending on tone (You ate it)
Ta’ to’ = OK (it’s all there)
Hazme coro = pay attention to me; do what I’m doing (Sing back-up to me)
Muela = a made-up store intended to convince someone (molar)
¿Me copiaste? = Did you understand me? (Did you copy me?)
En olla = broke (in the pot)
A millón = with a lot of energy (to the million)
¿Quién lo patrocina? = who’s paying you to act so dumb? (Who’s sponsoring that?)
Bulto = story (bag)
Emperrao = in love (dogged)
Pecao = ugly person (sin)
Ecole cuá = Exactly, agreed. (I have NO IDEA where this one came from! Any ideas?)
Ella tiene todo el dinero ma’ 20 peso = She’s rich (She has all the money plus 20 pesos)
Grillo = unattractive but easy woman (cricket)
Juquiao = crazy or drunk (hooked, from English)
Suave, que es bolero = calm down (easy, it’s a bolero [slow song])
Ta’ jevi = Great! (It’s heavy, from English)
Tú ta’ happy = you’re kind of drunk (you’re happy, from English)
Te paniqueate = you freaked out (from English panicked)
Vacanyol = Someone who tries to seem cool by using expressions, clothing, etc borrowed from New York (combination of vacán, cool, with yol, from Dominican pronunciation of New York)
Incidentally, I recently found that vacán or vacana comes from the Portuguese bacana, meaning fantastic. I wonder how long it’s been in use and how it got into Dominican Spanish?
Anyway, when in office ex-president Hipólito Mejía was particularly famous for using the vocabulary of tigueraje. The article mentioned quotes him as having told (current, but ex at the time of the incident) president Leonel Fernández, “te sub[i los vidrios” – or “I rolled the window up on you” – in order to say “I’m not listening to what you’re saying.” It’s roughly the equivalent of George Bush telling Bill Clinton, “Talk to the hand.”
At the moment, I’m temporarily residing in a writers’ colony right here in called Casa Libre en la Solana (http://www.casalibre.org/). It’s a great place and I’m getting a lot done. I’m going to be very sad when I have to leave my cute little apartment here next week! Anyway, lately I’ve been writing about gender roles in the DR, particularly that of the tíguere. So here, for you, readers, is a moment of diversion with the tíguere.
Literally, tíguere is simply the peculiarly Dominican pronunciation of the word for “tiger.” But it also refers to a type of man in the DR – a hustler, a master of the street, a sharp dresser, and a tough guy. The tíguere arose along with the urbanization of the country, having first emerged in Santo Domingo around the 1920s. Porfirio Rubirosa, the famous 1950s playboy, and even Trujillo himself are classic tígueres. Today, tigueraje (the behavior or the domain of the tíguere) is a homegrown Dominican youth culture with its own style of dress, music (these days, usually reggaetón and/or “merengues de la calle”), and language.
I came across a recent article in Hoy newspaper that spoke about how the vocabulary of tigueraje is showing up everywhere now, even in the upper classes, among educated people, and high-ranking politicians. The article also gives a list of current expressions. Here are some of them, translated into both idiomatic and literal English. (I changed some of the definitions from the article that were incorrect.)
Tumba eso = forget it (lit. knock it over)
Ponte cloro = be clear (lit. “light”); tell the truth (lit. put bleach on yourself)
¿Quién te cotiza? = Who puts up with your craziness? (Who pays you?)
Te guayaste = You messed up (you grated yourself)
Te subí “lo vidrio” = I’m not listening to you (I rolled up the windows on you)
Te la comiste = You messed up – or were awesome, depending on tone (You ate it)
Ta’ to’ = OK (it’s all there)
Hazme coro = pay attention to me; do what I’m doing (Sing back-up to me)
Muela = a made-up store intended to convince someone (molar)
¿Me copiaste? = Did you understand me? (Did you copy me?)
En olla = broke (in the pot)
A millón = with a lot of energy (to the million)
¿Quién lo patrocina? = who’s paying you to act so dumb? (Who’s sponsoring that?)
Bulto = story (bag)
Emperrao = in love (dogged)
Pecao = ugly person (sin)
Ecole cuá = Exactly, agreed. (I have NO IDEA where this one came from! Any ideas?)
Ella tiene todo el dinero ma’ 20 peso = She’s rich (She has all the money plus 20 pesos)
Grillo = unattractive but easy woman (cricket)
Juquiao = crazy or drunk (hooked, from English)
Suave, que es bolero = calm down (easy, it’s a bolero [slow song])
Ta’ jevi = Great! (It’s heavy, from English)
Tú ta’ happy = you’re kind of drunk (you’re happy, from English)
Te paniqueate = you freaked out (from English panicked)
Vacanyol = Someone who tries to seem cool by using expressions, clothing, etc borrowed from New York (combination of vacán, cool, with yol, from Dominican pronunciation of New York)
Incidentally, I recently found that vacán or vacana comes from the Portuguese bacana, meaning fantastic. I wonder how long it’s been in use and how it got into Dominican Spanish?
Anyway, when in office ex-president Hipólito Mejía was particularly famous for using the vocabulary of tigueraje. The article mentioned quotes him as having told (current, but ex at the time of the incident) president Leonel Fernández, “te sub[i los vidrios” – or “I rolled the window up on you” – in order to say “I’m not listening to what you’re saying.” It’s roughly the equivalent of George Bush telling Bill Clinton, “Talk to the hand.”
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Update & Interview with El Flaco
You haven’t heard from me for a while, so perhaps you’re wondering where I’ve been since my last posting. Since returning to Tucson from New York, I’ve mostly just been writing and transcribing. I also took a little jaunt to California to visit my elderly grandparents and to Tempe to attend a conference on dance. None of this has much to do with the Dominican Republic, merengue típico, or accordions, so I didn’t post any of it. However, I have seen a few scenic sights.
As for all things tipico, I've decided, in the absence of new accordion experiences, to post excerpts from interviews and other fieldwork-related materials. So here's the first installment: Flaco's story! This is excerpted from an interview I did with the great tamborero back in 2002, where he talks about playing with Tatico and how tipico has changed since then. The interview was conducted in a barbershop in Queens.
DOMINGO "FLACO" PEÑA
Born in the town of Maimón de Bonao, Flaco started playing with his accordionist father at age 9, mostly on tambora, but also güira and conga. Although merengue típico was his first choice, he also played for a while in a Bonao-based orquesta led by Jesus García, called Combo Bonao.
“I learned how to play on my own. Or rather, no one told me, play like this. Because the percussion instruments, tambora, güira – that’s born in you. People say, ‘Teach me to play tambora.’ No. It’s born in you. Whoever isn’t born with the feeling of playing won’t learn it.”
Around 1964 or 1965, Flaco moved to the capital where he met many of the era’s top musicians, including Tatico. This was the time of the April Revolution, however, and he soon left for three months in Nagua at the behest of Juan Prieto, an accordionist and accordion tuner, and then joined Combo Candela. But Tatico didn’t forget El Flaco’s playing and eventually he brought the tamborero to Santiago. In 1972, they began to perform together:
“I met him in the capital because I played a gig with him. He was very young still, new. After that we didn’t see each other because I came here [to New York] and he went to the capital because they put him on Dominican TV. I was in the campo. Later he was taken off TV, the war and all that broke out, and that’s when he came to look for me.
“Tatico was the maximum. The maximum as an accordionist, as a person, however. He was very good to us, the musicians. Everyone liked him, even children. Tatico was so loved that he’d sit down to play dominoes and the people would accumulate thinking he was going to play music…. He was famous from the beginning.”
When Flaco played with Tatico, they played a variety of rhythms, some of which are no longer in use. The paseo, for example, “used to be obligatory” in a merengue derecho. They also played mangulinas, which are now generally heard only in folkloric groups. “If they request it, it’ll be played. But people used to request it a lot, and now they almost never request it. It has to be a person who remembers it.” He even recorded a bolero with Tatico, making them perhaps the first and the last típico group to do so.
Tambora playing has changed, he says, in that it is faster today and there is little opportunity for playing mangulina or paseo. The instrument itself is also different, since many people now use the ones made by LP which have metal rims and screw tighteners rather than wood rims and ropes. The dance style is also different. “Before, dancing a merengue was almost like dancing a danza. The merengue wasn’t so fast as it is now. It was a smooth merengue, danzeado. Now whoever dances merengue goes home all worn out!”
Mostly, he remembers that dance parties in the Cibao were far different in those days. They were held in outdoor shelters with cement floors that were normally used for drying tobacco or rice but were cleaned out for the occasion. Sometimes there were theme parties, like one time when everyone had to make their dresses out of paper. “And that whole party, everything sounded like, ‘sh, sh, sh.’”
In the capital, however, things were more like they are today. There were bars a trio could go to and play a couple of merengues and earn from 10 to 25 pesos. For a full party they might earn 50 or 60. In the camp they were lucky to get 7 pesos each. “Y tocando hasta las siete de la mañana. Las fiestas amanecían de verdad.”
Flaco has really lived tipico history. He was even present for some of the events that inspired some of the most popular merengues. For example, the lyrics to “El Puente Seco” refers to Isaias “Saco” Henriquez, Tatico’s brother, who had killed himself on a particular overpass on the highway between Santiago and Navarrete. One verse states:
En el puente seco
se me acercó un guapo
Y tuvo al matarme
donde cayó Saco
(On the dry bridge
A tough guy approached me
And he tried to kill me
Where Saco fell.)
Flaco recalls that Diogenes Jimenez composed that song when, “we were walking along there alter a gig and he was flirting with a pretty girl who was there. Then another guy who was practically her husband snuck up on him with a knife.” While lyrics like those are true representations of Cibao life, he believes that in merengue today, “none of [the lyrics] are worth the trouble. Honestly. They don’t make sense.”
When one thinks of "Culiquitaca," it's kind of hard to argue with the guy.
As for all things tipico, I've decided, in the absence of new accordion experiences, to post excerpts from interviews and other fieldwork-related materials. So here's the first installment: Flaco's story! This is excerpted from an interview I did with the great tamborero back in 2002, where he talks about playing with Tatico and how tipico has changed since then. The interview was conducted in a barbershop in Queens.
DOMINGO "FLACO" PEÑA
Born in the town of Maimón de Bonao, Flaco started playing with his accordionist father at age 9, mostly on tambora, but also güira and conga. Although merengue típico was his first choice, he also played for a while in a Bonao-based orquesta led by Jesus García, called Combo Bonao.
“I learned how to play on my own. Or rather, no one told me, play like this. Because the percussion instruments, tambora, güira – that’s born in you. People say, ‘Teach me to play tambora.’ No. It’s born in you. Whoever isn’t born with the feeling of playing won’t learn it.”
Around 1964 or 1965, Flaco moved to the capital where he met many of the era’s top musicians, including Tatico. This was the time of the April Revolution, however, and he soon left for three months in Nagua at the behest of Juan Prieto, an accordionist and accordion tuner, and then joined Combo Candela. But Tatico didn’t forget El Flaco’s playing and eventually he brought the tamborero to Santiago. In 1972, they began to perform together:
“I met him in the capital because I played a gig with him. He was very young still, new. After that we didn’t see each other because I came here [to New York] and he went to the capital because they put him on Dominican TV. I was in the campo. Later he was taken off TV, the war and all that broke out, and that’s when he came to look for me.
“Tatico was the maximum. The maximum as an accordionist, as a person, however. He was very good to us, the musicians. Everyone liked him, even children. Tatico was so loved that he’d sit down to play dominoes and the people would accumulate thinking he was going to play music…. He was famous from the beginning.”
When Flaco played with Tatico, they played a variety of rhythms, some of which are no longer in use. The paseo, for example, “used to be obligatory” in a merengue derecho. They also played mangulinas, which are now generally heard only in folkloric groups. “If they request it, it’ll be played. But people used to request it a lot, and now they almost never request it. It has to be a person who remembers it.” He even recorded a bolero with Tatico, making them perhaps the first and the last típico group to do so.
Tambora playing has changed, he says, in that it is faster today and there is little opportunity for playing mangulina or paseo. The instrument itself is also different, since many people now use the ones made by LP which have metal rims and screw tighteners rather than wood rims and ropes. The dance style is also different. “Before, dancing a merengue was almost like dancing a danza. The merengue wasn’t so fast as it is now. It was a smooth merengue, danzeado. Now whoever dances merengue goes home all worn out!”
Mostly, he remembers that dance parties in the Cibao were far different in those days. They were held in outdoor shelters with cement floors that were normally used for drying tobacco or rice but were cleaned out for the occasion. Sometimes there were theme parties, like one time when everyone had to make their dresses out of paper. “And that whole party, everything sounded like, ‘sh, sh, sh.’”
In the capital, however, things were more like they are today. There were bars a trio could go to and play a couple of merengues and earn from 10 to 25 pesos. For a full party they might earn 50 or 60. In the camp they were lucky to get 7 pesos each. “Y tocando hasta las siete de la mañana. Las fiestas amanecían de verdad.”
Flaco has really lived tipico history. He was even present for some of the events that inspired some of the most popular merengues. For example, the lyrics to “El Puente Seco” refers to Isaias “Saco” Henriquez, Tatico’s brother, who had killed himself on a particular overpass on the highway between Santiago and Navarrete. One verse states:
En el puente seco
se me acercó un guapo
Y tuvo al matarme
donde cayó Saco
(On the dry bridge
A tough guy approached me
And he tried to kill me
Where Saco fell.)
Flaco recalls that Diogenes Jimenez composed that song when, “we were walking along there alter a gig and he was flirting with a pretty girl who was there. Then another guy who was practically her husband snuck up on him with a knife.” While lyrics like those are true representations of Cibao life, he believes that in merengue today, “none of [the lyrics] are worth the trouble. Honestly. They don’t make sense.”
When one thinks of "Culiquitaca," it's kind of hard to argue with the guy.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Tipico art guide: get out and get cultured!
10/9/06
My New York trip is now at an end, and tomorrow I head back to Tucson. The event at El Museo del Barrio went well: three interesting talks on merengue history, one on new directions in popular merengue, and my own on merengue típico (hey, I gotta represent). It was fun to reconnect with my merengue colleagues over a couple Presidentes, and I even scored a DVD on palos at the first New York Dominican book fair taking place up the road in the Heights.
You might recall that this symposium was held in honor of an art show on the theme of merengue. When I finished talking with audience members after my talk, though, the Museo’s galleries were closed. I had to go back the next day to actually see the exhibit. It was worth the second trip, though. Here I offer you a típico guide to and critique of “Visual rhythms / ritmos visuales.” I’m not an art critic, so I’ll just talk about what I know: music.
Most of the representative works actually have accordions or even whole típico trios somewhere in them. Some to look for:
1. “La fiesta del centenario” by Alfredo Senior La Paz. Shows couples dancing to merengue tipico at a centennial celebration in 1944, the guys looking dapper in hats, suits, and two-toned shoes. In the back next to a typical wooden Dominican house, four musicians are at work. Interestingly, the tambora is built like a barrel, with iron rings holding it together but no rope ties. The guirero is playing a gourd rather than metal instrument, and the fourth musician plays maracas. Wonder what that sounded like? Most of the other works depicting guireros also show gourd guiros rather than metal guiras, even those painted quite recently. Since no one really plays those in the típico world anymore, I assume the artists are including it as a symbol of “folklore,” “tradition,” or even “indigenousness” (since many believe the Tainos used gourd instruments) rather than trying to depict contemporary musical culture literally.
2. Untitled work by Jose Vela Zanetti, painted in 1960, is one of the few that shows a metal guira (here, it’s one of the old kind with cones over the ends). It’s also a beautiful, large-scale work showing a trio playng at night next to a sugarcane field, as a peasant man tries to woo an indifferent woman to one side. The dark, muted colors and heavy shadows really give the feel of the tropics at night. In the more recent “Musicos” by Jacinto Dominguez (1990-95) you can also see a cone guira next to the strangely tiny accordion played by the singing musician in the foreground. Although the instrument is unrealistic, the accordionists’ face actually looked the most “real” to me out of any of the works.
3. “Fiesta campesina” by Yoryi Morel was painted in 1959 and shows a trio of musicians playing and singing next to an empty bottle and a few shot glasses full of rum. In the background, people in colorful outfits dance and roast a pig on a spit in front of an enramada. “Merengue” by Jaime Colson is a vibrantly colored work from 1938 showing a lively gathering of dancers and musicians under an enramada, while a woman at right in a long white gown is fanning herself, resembling a Greek goddess only with nalgas. These two works don’t share much – except for one interesting feature for works that are supposed to depict merengue, which is that the tambora in both is played in an upright position. So it doesn’t seem that it is merengue típico that’s being performed here. Morel painted in the Cibao, where it could have been a zapateo instead – a different rhythm that was played with the tambora in this position. Colson lived and worked in the capital, so perhaps he observed other kinds of accordion trios in the south – like pri-pri.
4. “El merengue” by Jose Vela Zanetti, 1955, is a bluish, Cubist-influenced work where three musicians play guiro, maracas, and a small drum played upright, perhaps a balsie (this would make sense, since he worked in the south of the DR). The instrumentation doesn’t suggest merengue at all, though the Museo’s blurb on the work suggests Zanetti picked the instruments for purely symbolic reasons, in order to represent “Dominicanness” rather than the “Europeanness” of the accordion.
5. “Jolgorio” (1988), a gigantic painting by Plutarco Andujar done entirely in black and white, is a beautiful representation of a rural party in full swing. From the trio of típico musicians in front, to the dancing couples in their best party outfits – one with her arm flung over her head mid-turn, to the artist himself with his shirt open, drinking straight from the bottle, it draws you in to the action. You could almost write a whole novel about the characters here.
6. The photographic works in the exhibit are both beautiful and provide documentary evidence of musical practices. A series of photographs by Wilfredo Garcia, taken in the 1970s, show a perico ripiao combo in Sabana Grande de Boya – a town in the southeast and far from the Cibao. By that point, the formerly regional style had already been spread throughout the country. Here, the accordionist plays an old one-row instrument, but the guira is the more modern uncovered kind. I like the one that shows the dancers, too: a dapper young tíguere in sunglasses dances with an older woman, perhaps his mother. But the piece that most fascinated me was the video montage, which shows Tin Pichardo and partner dancing old merengue styles and Nico Lora’s son, Antonio, playing accordion. The old instrument has no shoulder straps so he plays it by resting it on his knee and using the thumb strap. It is a two-row instrument like those we still use today, but it has been heavily customized with additional buttons on both sides. He sings a song in praise of farmers – perhaps an effort to stave off the effects of the processes of urbanization and migration that already were in full swing.
Some more modern interpretations of the típico theme:
7. Many new works by New York-based artists have been added to this exhibition since I last saw it in Santiago. One must-see is “merengue típico” by David Medina, the popular deejay. He created a blue tambora, pink guira, and white accordion out of glass, echoing the colors of the Dominican and American flags. Perhaps these instruments show how fragile and how beautiful are the traditions immigrants take with them in diaspora. I’d like to hear what they sound like!
8. There are a couple of works that use típico musicians to comment on contemporary Dominican culture. One of these is the monumental “Santa Fefa divirtiendo unos chivos sin ley.” It shows Fefita in one of her infamous calendar outfits – skimpy orange lingerie with matching fishnets – with a golden halo, surrounded by three frolicking goats, one in particular apparently feeling a little bit “happy,” all reproduced on an old canvas truck cover. The “chivos sin ley” could be interpreted as outlaws, or simply misbehaving young men, and Fefita entertains them. Is it simply an irreverent, funny look at popular culture? Is it a comment on delinquency and “lawlessness” in contemporary society? Or does it depict popular perceptions of merengue típico as the music of the lower classes and of tigueraje, a “lawless” domain? I’m not sure myself, but Fefita reportedly liked it when she saw it at the Centro Leon in Santiago because it was the biggest work in the whole exhibition.
9. “La muerte del merengue: Homenaje a Tatico Henriquez” was painted by Raul Recio in 1988. It is a big and striking work, painted all in yellow and black with tiny accents in red, in a cartoonish, almost naïve style. From the left, ten floating trumpets blare, surrounded by flying vinyl records, and a nude female figure plays a radio while under a shower, her head itself an LP. On the right, a half dozen figures collapse under the onslaught of noise, as the bell of another trumpet rains LPs down on them. Their red hearts are breaking as an accordion, tambora, and guira, drop from their hands. Are they really just “mourning Tatico’s death,” as the gallery description tells us? Or is the artist expressing dissatisfaction with the post-Tatico music scene – the “noise” of orquesta merengue, represented by the trumpet (an instrument never used in Tatico’s or any other típico group), and commodified musical culture, represented by the LP?
Besides the merengue exhibit, the Museo is also displaying 10 works of contemporary Dominican art on other subjects that’s worth checking out. These depict Dominican culture through its sports (Freddy Rodriguez’s “Homenaje a Tony Pena” and “Homenaje a Sammy Sosa”), children (“Juguetes” by Jaime Jimenez), and more abstract means. Nicolas Dumit Estevez’s “The flag (la bandera)” documents his creation of a “Dominican York flag” a la Betsy Ross: he ends up with an image that combines elements of the Dominican and American flags, with an airplane mid-flight in the middle to show the constant journey. He also contributed a similarly-themed piece of performance art to the Merengue exhibit: in the caped outfit of “SuperMerengue” complete with flip-flops, he brandishes cell phones and plantains while directing the audience towards the exits of an imaginary plane.
To sum up: go see it! Experience Dominican culture, and support Dominican art in New York!
My New York trip is now at an end, and tomorrow I head back to Tucson. The event at El Museo del Barrio went well: three interesting talks on merengue history, one on new directions in popular merengue, and my own on merengue típico (hey, I gotta represent). It was fun to reconnect with my merengue colleagues over a couple Presidentes, and I even scored a DVD on palos at the first New York Dominican book fair taking place up the road in the Heights.
You might recall that this symposium was held in honor of an art show on the theme of merengue. When I finished talking with audience members after my talk, though, the Museo’s galleries were closed. I had to go back the next day to actually see the exhibit. It was worth the second trip, though. Here I offer you a típico guide to and critique of “Visual rhythms / ritmos visuales.” I’m not an art critic, so I’ll just talk about what I know: music.
Most of the representative works actually have accordions or even whole típico trios somewhere in them. Some to look for:
1. “La fiesta del centenario” by Alfredo Senior La Paz. Shows couples dancing to merengue tipico at a centennial celebration in 1944, the guys looking dapper in hats, suits, and two-toned shoes. In the back next to a typical wooden Dominican house, four musicians are at work. Interestingly, the tambora is built like a barrel, with iron rings holding it together but no rope ties. The guirero is playing a gourd rather than metal instrument, and the fourth musician plays maracas. Wonder what that sounded like? Most of the other works depicting guireros also show gourd guiros rather than metal guiras, even those painted quite recently. Since no one really plays those in the típico world anymore, I assume the artists are including it as a symbol of “folklore,” “tradition,” or even “indigenousness” (since many believe the Tainos used gourd instruments) rather than trying to depict contemporary musical culture literally.
2. Untitled work by Jose Vela Zanetti, painted in 1960, is one of the few that shows a metal guira (here, it’s one of the old kind with cones over the ends). It’s also a beautiful, large-scale work showing a trio playng at night next to a sugarcane field, as a peasant man tries to woo an indifferent woman to one side. The dark, muted colors and heavy shadows really give the feel of the tropics at night. In the more recent “Musicos” by Jacinto Dominguez (1990-95) you can also see a cone guira next to the strangely tiny accordion played by the singing musician in the foreground. Although the instrument is unrealistic, the accordionists’ face actually looked the most “real” to me out of any of the works.
3. “Fiesta campesina” by Yoryi Morel was painted in 1959 and shows a trio of musicians playing and singing next to an empty bottle and a few shot glasses full of rum. In the background, people in colorful outfits dance and roast a pig on a spit in front of an enramada. “Merengue” by Jaime Colson is a vibrantly colored work from 1938 showing a lively gathering of dancers and musicians under an enramada, while a woman at right in a long white gown is fanning herself, resembling a Greek goddess only with nalgas. These two works don’t share much – except for one interesting feature for works that are supposed to depict merengue, which is that the tambora in both is played in an upright position. So it doesn’t seem that it is merengue típico that’s being performed here. Morel painted in the Cibao, where it could have been a zapateo instead – a different rhythm that was played with the tambora in this position. Colson lived and worked in the capital, so perhaps he observed other kinds of accordion trios in the south – like pri-pri.
4. “El merengue” by Jose Vela Zanetti, 1955, is a bluish, Cubist-influenced work where three musicians play guiro, maracas, and a small drum played upright, perhaps a balsie (this would make sense, since he worked in the south of the DR). The instrumentation doesn’t suggest merengue at all, though the Museo’s blurb on the work suggests Zanetti picked the instruments for purely symbolic reasons, in order to represent “Dominicanness” rather than the “Europeanness” of the accordion.
5. “Jolgorio” (1988), a gigantic painting by Plutarco Andujar done entirely in black and white, is a beautiful representation of a rural party in full swing. From the trio of típico musicians in front, to the dancing couples in their best party outfits – one with her arm flung over her head mid-turn, to the artist himself with his shirt open, drinking straight from the bottle, it draws you in to the action. You could almost write a whole novel about the characters here.
6. The photographic works in the exhibit are both beautiful and provide documentary evidence of musical practices. A series of photographs by Wilfredo Garcia, taken in the 1970s, show a perico ripiao combo in Sabana Grande de Boya – a town in the southeast and far from the Cibao. By that point, the formerly regional style had already been spread throughout the country. Here, the accordionist plays an old one-row instrument, but the guira is the more modern uncovered kind. I like the one that shows the dancers, too: a dapper young tíguere in sunglasses dances with an older woman, perhaps his mother. But the piece that most fascinated me was the video montage, which shows Tin Pichardo and partner dancing old merengue styles and Nico Lora’s son, Antonio, playing accordion. The old instrument has no shoulder straps so he plays it by resting it on his knee and using the thumb strap. It is a two-row instrument like those we still use today, but it has been heavily customized with additional buttons on both sides. He sings a song in praise of farmers – perhaps an effort to stave off the effects of the processes of urbanization and migration that already were in full swing.
Some more modern interpretations of the típico theme:
7. Many new works by New York-based artists have been added to this exhibition since I last saw it in Santiago. One must-see is “merengue típico” by David Medina, the popular deejay. He created a blue tambora, pink guira, and white accordion out of glass, echoing the colors of the Dominican and American flags. Perhaps these instruments show how fragile and how beautiful are the traditions immigrants take with them in diaspora. I’d like to hear what they sound like!
8. There are a couple of works that use típico musicians to comment on contemporary Dominican culture. One of these is the monumental “Santa Fefa divirtiendo unos chivos sin ley.” It shows Fefita in one of her infamous calendar outfits – skimpy orange lingerie with matching fishnets – with a golden halo, surrounded by three frolicking goats, one in particular apparently feeling a little bit “happy,” all reproduced on an old canvas truck cover. The “chivos sin ley” could be interpreted as outlaws, or simply misbehaving young men, and Fefita entertains them. Is it simply an irreverent, funny look at popular culture? Is it a comment on delinquency and “lawlessness” in contemporary society? Or does it depict popular perceptions of merengue típico as the music of the lower classes and of tigueraje, a “lawless” domain? I’m not sure myself, but Fefita reportedly liked it when she saw it at the Centro Leon in Santiago because it was the biggest work in the whole exhibition.
9. “La muerte del merengue: Homenaje a Tatico Henriquez” was painted by Raul Recio in 1988. It is a big and striking work, painted all in yellow and black with tiny accents in red, in a cartoonish, almost naïve style. From the left, ten floating trumpets blare, surrounded by flying vinyl records, and a nude female figure plays a radio while under a shower, her head itself an LP. On the right, a half dozen figures collapse under the onslaught of noise, as the bell of another trumpet rains LPs down on them. Their red hearts are breaking as an accordion, tambora, and guira, drop from their hands. Are they really just “mourning Tatico’s death,” as the gallery description tells us? Or is the artist expressing dissatisfaction with the post-Tatico music scene – the “noise” of orquesta merengue, represented by the trumpet (an instrument never used in Tatico’s or any other típico group), and commodified musical culture, represented by the LP?
Besides the merengue exhibit, the Museo is also displaying 10 works of contemporary Dominican art on other subjects that’s worth checking out. These depict Dominican culture through its sports (Freddy Rodriguez’s “Homenaje a Tony Pena” and “Homenaje a Sammy Sosa”), children (“Juguetes” by Jaime Jimenez), and more abstract means. Nicolas Dumit Estevez’s “The flag (la bandera)” documents his creation of a “Dominican York flag” a la Betsy Ross: he ends up with an image that combines elements of the Dominican and American flags, with an airplane mid-flight in the middle to show the constant journey. He also contributed a similarly-themed piece of performance art to the Merengue exhibit: in the caped outfit of “SuperMerengue” complete with flip-flops, he brandishes cell phones and plantains while directing the audience towards the exits of an imaginary plane.
To sum up: go see it! Experience Dominican culture, and support Dominican art in New York!
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Merengue panel discussion at El Museo
I promised to keep you all abreast of merengue-related events, so here you go.In conjunction with an excellent exhibit of merengue-related art at El Museo, a panel discussion on merengue is being offered. Even if you can't make the talks, try to see the exhibit, which includes great art by Dominicans and Dominican-Americans!
HEY! Is that me scheduled to talk at 2:55? Guess I better get ready...
Schedule for October 7:
2:00 Welcoming by El Museo Staff.
2:05 Introduction by Moderator:
Peter Manuel, (PhD) Professor John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and Graduate Center, CUNY.
2:10 1st Panelist: "Merengue, Danza, and Meringue: three musical versions of the Caribbean contradanza"
Edgardo Díaz Díaz, (PhD) Professor John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
2:25 2nd Panelist: "An Impious Passion Called Merengue, The Satanizacion of Merengue in the Caribbean in century XIX"
Darío Tejeda, (PhD) Director of the Institute for Caribbean Studies (INEC).
2:40 3rd Panelist: "New Views on Merengue History"
Paul Austerlitz, (PhD) Assistant Professor, Sunderman Conservatory of Music, Gettysburg College.
2:55 4th Panelist: "Merengue Típico in New York and Santiago"
Sydney Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, NYU.
3:10 5th Panelist: "Current Trends, the influence of Hip-Hop and Reggaeton on Merengue"
Angelina Tallaj, PhD Candidate Graduate Center, CUNY.
3:25 Open dialogue moderated by Peter Manuel + Q&A .
HEY! Is that me scheduled to talk at 2:55? Guess I better get ready...
Schedule for October 7:
2:00 Welcoming by El Museo Staff.
2:05 Introduction by Moderator:
Peter Manuel, (PhD) Professor John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and Graduate Center, CUNY.
2:10 1st Panelist: "Merengue, Danza, and Meringue: three musical versions of the Caribbean contradanza"
Edgardo Díaz Díaz, (PhD) Professor John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
2:25 2nd Panelist: "An Impious Passion Called Merengue, The Satanizacion of Merengue in the Caribbean in century XIX"
Darío Tejeda, (PhD) Director of the Institute for Caribbean Studies (INEC).
2:40 3rd Panelist: "New Views on Merengue History"
Paul Austerlitz, (PhD) Assistant Professor, Sunderman Conservatory of Music, Gettysburg College.
2:55 4th Panelist: "Merengue Típico in New York and Santiago"
Sydney Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, NYU.
3:10 5th Panelist: "Current Trends, the influence of Hip-Hop and Reggaeton on Merengue"
Angelina Tallaj, PhD Candidate Graduate Center, CUNY.
3:25 Open dialogue moderated by Peter Manuel + Q&A .
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Leopoldo Santos at Macoris
An evening at Macoris Restaurant in East New York, Brooklyn - the best place for merengue tipico in New York.
El Prodigio and Rafaelito Mirabal
At the closing ceremony for the Feria Regional del Libro in Santiago, Dominican Republic in September 2005, accordionist El Prodigio gave this surprise performance. He joined jazz pianist Rafaelito Mirabal to play Periblues (a tune Miarbal composed and El Prodigio recorded on his 2005 album, Pambiche Meets Jazz) - the first time anyone's tried to combine jazz with merengue tipico. I've excerpted some exciting moments here: President Leonel Fernandez and his wife arriving, El Prodigio's solo, Frandy Sax's solo, and the final run through the tune.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
September 11, belatedly
So I wanted to post this last week at the appropriate moment, but I had strep throat so I slept the week away instead.
Anyway, for the 5th anniversary of September 11, I thought you all might want to hear a tipico take on the events of that day. As it happens, that day is all entwined with tipico in my own experience. At the time I was living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. If I hadn't been up late the night before I probably would have been on my way to work at the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, which was on Church St. not far from "ground zero." Luckily, I slept in a bit and woke up to find my roommates watching the towers and the Pentagon burning on CNN. We were all in disbelief.
My first thought was of my dad. He was in Washington, DC, and I wasn't sure where his office was in relation to the Pentagon. I called up and found he was away somewhere else for a meeting - good timing.
Then the first tower fell and I realized my sister was right there, getting buried in the cloud of debris. She was a teacher at the High School for Leadership and Public Service, the closest school to the twin towers. I called her cell phone in a panic. Miraculously, I got through - the only call she actually received all day, since soon the cell phone tower would be gone. She was running with her students through the debris cloud, trying to follow a police officer she couldn't see, who wasn't sure where to take them anyway. They ended up in Battery Park. Eventually, after the second tower fell and they huddled on the lee side of a restaurant, a boat came and picked them up and took them to New Jersey. But we didn't know any of that until much later.
At least I knew she was OK. David David, who was teaching me my first few merengues on accordion at the time, went with me to Sunset Park, where we walked up the hill for a perfect view of lower Manhattan and the black cloud that hid the fact the towers were no longer there.
For the following months, no one could think of much else. David got fed up with New York and left for the DR - the day after the plane full of Dominicans that had crashed into Rockaway Beach. (A fine fall for disasters.) Other musicians stuck it out, finding different ways to commemorate their loss. For Dominicans, especially, the twin towers had been the symbol of the US and the promising future they'd thought the country offered.
I documented one of these expressions in my article on Pinto Guira. On a commission from a local guira player, he was working on an instrument featuring the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty when I photographed him at work in early 2002. Take a look:
http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic28-3-4/pinto.html
Also, Santo Gil, the bass player in the Corona, Queens - based group of Berto Reyes, wrote a song about the attacks. I just listened to it again, and it reminds me of how patriotic we all felt in those months (too bad that's all been stamped out of us with all the lies we've heard since). It's an interesting song both for the topic and for the rap that comes in at the end. Here are the lyrics (I couldn't manage to transcribe the rap, though; too fast! If any of you can figure it out, please email me...)
La Plaga Maldita
By Santo Gil, Performed by Berto Reyes y su conjunto
Si el mundo sigue el ejemplo
De las Naciones Unidas
Estuvieramos en paz
Disfrutando de la vida.
La nacion americana
Yo le juro que la quiero
Porque ellos prestan ayuda
A todito el mundo entero.
Luchemos todos unidos
A encontrar el terrorista
Para poder acabar
Con esa plaga maldita.
Cuando mi palo gemelo
Todo se vio un ahumazo
Toda la culpa la tiene
Esa cara de chivo flaco.
Yo no me puedo olvidar
Ese once de septiembre
Que murieron tantos ninos
Tambien hombres y mujeres.
Vamos a dar la mano
Sin temor, y muchas ganas
Pa’ que salga triunfadora
La nacion americana.
Que Dios bendiga mil veces
La nacion americana
Que le protega la vida
Y tambien le protege el alma.
Que Dios bendiga nuestro [seres]
Por nosotros estan luchando
Y que regresen de alla
Con ese triunfo en la mano.
Vamos todos a luchar
A encontrar el terrorista
Para poder acabar
Con esta plaga maldita.
And the English translation:
If the world followed the example
Of the United Nations
We’d be at peace
Enjoying life.
The American nation,
I swear that I love it
Because they give help
To all the world.
Let’s all fight together
To find the terrorist
To be able to end
This damn plague.
When my twin tower
Was all in smoke
The blame belonged entirely
To that skinny goat face.
I can’t forget
That September 11
So many children died
As well as men and women.
We’ll give a hand
Without fear, with all our heart
So that the American nation
Will be triumphant.
May God bless a thousand times
The American nation
Let him protect its life
And also its soul.
May God bless our [soldiers]
They are fighting for us
And may they come back
With triumph in hand.
We all will fight
To find the terrorist
In order to be done
With this damn plague.
I've put up an mp3 of the end of this song, where you can hear the last chorus and the rap. Get it on this page:
http://www.merengue-ripiao.com/blogfiles.html
Anyway, for the 5th anniversary of September 11, I thought you all might want to hear a tipico take on the events of that day. As it happens, that day is all entwined with tipico in my own experience. At the time I was living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. If I hadn't been up late the night before I probably would have been on my way to work at the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, which was on Church St. not far from "ground zero." Luckily, I slept in a bit and woke up to find my roommates watching the towers and the Pentagon burning on CNN. We were all in disbelief.
My first thought was of my dad. He was in Washington, DC, and I wasn't sure where his office was in relation to the Pentagon. I called up and found he was away somewhere else for a meeting - good timing.
Then the first tower fell and I realized my sister was right there, getting buried in the cloud of debris. She was a teacher at the High School for Leadership and Public Service, the closest school to the twin towers. I called her cell phone in a panic. Miraculously, I got through - the only call she actually received all day, since soon the cell phone tower would be gone. She was running with her students through the debris cloud, trying to follow a police officer she couldn't see, who wasn't sure where to take them anyway. They ended up in Battery Park. Eventually, after the second tower fell and they huddled on the lee side of a restaurant, a boat came and picked them up and took them to New Jersey. But we didn't know any of that until much later.
At least I knew she was OK. David David, who was teaching me my first few merengues on accordion at the time, went with me to Sunset Park, where we walked up the hill for a perfect view of lower Manhattan and the black cloud that hid the fact the towers were no longer there.
For the following months, no one could think of much else. David got fed up with New York and left for the DR - the day after the plane full of Dominicans that had crashed into Rockaway Beach. (A fine fall for disasters.) Other musicians stuck it out, finding different ways to commemorate their loss. For Dominicans, especially, the twin towers had been the symbol of the US and the promising future they'd thought the country offered.
I documented one of these expressions in my article on Pinto Guira. On a commission from a local guira player, he was working on an instrument featuring the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty when I photographed him at work in early 2002. Take a look:
http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic28-3-4/pinto.html
Also, Santo Gil, the bass player in the Corona, Queens - based group of Berto Reyes, wrote a song about the attacks. I just listened to it again, and it reminds me of how patriotic we all felt in those months (too bad that's all been stamped out of us with all the lies we've heard since). It's an interesting song both for the topic and for the rap that comes in at the end. Here are the lyrics (I couldn't manage to transcribe the rap, though; too fast! If any of you can figure it out, please email me...)
La Plaga Maldita
By Santo Gil, Performed by Berto Reyes y su conjunto
Si el mundo sigue el ejemplo
De las Naciones Unidas
Estuvieramos en paz
Disfrutando de la vida.
La nacion americana
Yo le juro que la quiero
Porque ellos prestan ayuda
A todito el mundo entero.
Luchemos todos unidos
A encontrar el terrorista
Para poder acabar
Con esa plaga maldita.
Cuando mi palo gemelo
Todo se vio un ahumazo
Toda la culpa la tiene
Esa cara de chivo flaco.
Yo no me puedo olvidar
Ese once de septiembre
Que murieron tantos ninos
Tambien hombres y mujeres.
Vamos a dar la mano
Sin temor, y muchas ganas
Pa’ que salga triunfadora
La nacion americana.
Que Dios bendiga mil veces
La nacion americana
Que le protega la vida
Y tambien le protege el alma.
Que Dios bendiga nuestro [seres]
Por nosotros estan luchando
Y que regresen de alla
Con ese triunfo en la mano.
Vamos todos a luchar
A encontrar el terrorista
Para poder acabar
Con esta plaga maldita.
And the English translation:
If the world followed the example
Of the United Nations
We’d be at peace
Enjoying life.
The American nation,
I swear that I love it
Because they give help
To all the world.
Let’s all fight together
To find the terrorist
To be able to end
This damn plague.
When my twin tower
Was all in smoke
The blame belonged entirely
To that skinny goat face.
I can’t forget
That September 11
So many children died
As well as men and women.
We’ll give a hand
Without fear, with all our heart
So that the American nation
Will be triumphant.
May God bless a thousand times
The American nation
Let him protect its life
And also its soul.
May God bless our [soldiers]
They are fighting for us
And may they come back
With triumph in hand.
We all will fight
To find the terrorist
In order to be done
With this damn plague.
I've put up an mp3 of the end of this song, where you can hear the last chorus and the rap. Get it on this page:
http://www.merengue-ripiao.com/blogfiles.html
Friday, September 08, 2006
Long time no hear
Hi folks,
I know it's been a while since I've posted and I'm sorry about that. So here's a little update.
I've now been back home in Tucson for a couple of weeks. It's great to be home, especially since we're having an amazing monsoon season - they say it's the most rain we've had since the floods of '84, which I remember fondly. This makes for beautiful sunsets and delicious desert smells, but bad allergies. You win some, you lose some.
I've been noticing how funny it is that it's almost easier to get to know people in a foreign country than it is in your own culture. When you're a foreigner, you have a good excuse for wandering around and asking people all sorts of odd questions. Harder to get away with in your own town.
Anyway, I came home in order to write. It's been a relief to put the fieldwork to rest for a while. No more chasing around after impossible musicians! (for a while, at least - I'll be back in Santiago in January.) But writing a dissertation doesn't make for very exciting blogging. Hence the delay.
But don't give up on accordiongirl! Exciting, accordionish things will be coming soon. As I go through my field recordings I'll be putting up images, videos, and sound files for you to check out. Eventually, I'll assemble sound clips into an educational and entertaining tipico podcast. I'm also going to put up information about tipico and accordion-related events as they come up. So please keep checking back!
If you are the type of person who forgets to do things like check web pages with any regularity, don't forget that you can SUBSCRIBE to this blog by clicking on the RSS feed icon to the right or - even simpler - entering your email address in the friendly box provided and clicking "subscribe" (also in the right-hand column of this page).
TIPICO TIDBIT: The first ever Dominican-themed exhibit at the Museo del Barrio in New York opens in October. They will be showing a version of the exhibit of art related to merengue that was developed by the Centro Leon and shown there last year under the title "Que no me quiten lo pintao." The Museo del Barrio version will include a lot of new pieces by New York-area artists. And in connection with the exhibit, they will be offering merengue concerts (including at least one tipico group, TBA) and workshops for kids. There will also be a panel of academics talking about merengue, including me, accordiongirl. The exhibit opens October 5 and the panel takes place on October 7. If you are in New York please come by and check it out!
Thanks for being patient. Keep in touch and I will too.
Sydney
I know it's been a while since I've posted and I'm sorry about that. So here's a little update.
I've now been back home in Tucson for a couple of weeks. It's great to be home, especially since we're having an amazing monsoon season - they say it's the most rain we've had since the floods of '84, which I remember fondly. This makes for beautiful sunsets and delicious desert smells, but bad allergies. You win some, you lose some.
I've been noticing how funny it is that it's almost easier to get to know people in a foreign country than it is in your own culture. When you're a foreigner, you have a good excuse for wandering around and asking people all sorts of odd questions. Harder to get away with in your own town.
Anyway, I came home in order to write. It's been a relief to put the fieldwork to rest for a while. No more chasing around after impossible musicians! (for a while, at least - I'll be back in Santiago in January.) But writing a dissertation doesn't make for very exciting blogging. Hence the delay.
But don't give up on accordiongirl! Exciting, accordionish things will be coming soon. As I go through my field recordings I'll be putting up images, videos, and sound files for you to check out. Eventually, I'll assemble sound clips into an educational and entertaining tipico podcast. I'm also going to put up information about tipico and accordion-related events as they come up. So please keep checking back!
If you are the type of person who forgets to do things like check web pages with any regularity, don't forget that you can SUBSCRIBE to this blog by clicking on the RSS feed icon to the right or - even simpler - entering your email address in the friendly box provided and clicking "subscribe" (also in the right-hand column of this page).
TIPICO TIDBIT: The first ever Dominican-themed exhibit at the Museo del Barrio in New York opens in October. They will be showing a version of the exhibit of art related to merengue that was developed by the Centro Leon and shown there last year under the title "Que no me quiten lo pintao." The Museo del Barrio version will include a lot of new pieces by New York-area artists. And in connection with the exhibit, they will be offering merengue concerts (including at least one tipico group, TBA) and workshops for kids. There will also be a panel of academics talking about merengue, including me, accordiongirl. The exhibit opens October 5 and the panel takes place on October 7. If you are in New York please come by and check it out!
Thanks for being patient. Keep in touch and I will too.
Sydney
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Bushwick Block Party
Genito and his group, "Geniswing," play at a block party in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 8/20/06. The group ranges in age from approx. 16-20 and all are New York-born Dominicans.
New York to Tucson
8/14-8/23
After all the excitement, I needed a couple of days to recover, reorganize, and re-move myself to Hanna’s apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. But on Wednesday night I was ready once again for fieldwork. It would be the last chance I’d get to go to Macoris for a while, and I needed to say goodbye to all my friends over there. And so I found myself once again on the J train to East New York at 11:00 at night. I arrived to find Leopoldo Santos already playing, the other tables occupied by people unknown to me, who turned out to be a group of Hondurans and a group of Dominicans visiting from North Carolina. Things were tame enough for the first set. In the second, more of my friends arrived, including Chinito (who took a turn on guira) and the US-born contingent, consisting of Geno and some of his bandmates.
When the second set finished it was already 2 AM and I was about ready for bed, but Leopoldo, Tano, Junior, Cesar, and Jesus wouldn’t hear of it: there was no way I could leave without playing, even if I hadn’t practiced in a month and was bound to play badly. So I passed the time with the musicians, standing around outside on the sidewalk as some smoked and the others gossipped. I had some gossip for them tonight, as my sources had told me that Aguakate was going to break up. The news came at a surprising time, as their new CD was coming out this very week, but apparently the lead singer Chino had decided that he wanted to go his own route. The musicians all agreed it had been a bad move to promote the band solely with Chino’s face and personality - even the t-shirt given out at Sunday’s Dominican Day parade had featured only a cartoon of him over the word “Aguakate” - leaving the rest of the band out of the picture entirely. This was especially silly, they thought, because the band members were all accomplished musicians while Chino didn’t even know how to sing, only knew how to be a “personality” and a stage presence. At this point I noticed how funny it was that I was standing on one side of the streetcorner with the Dominican-born musicians, while the American-born kids were standing in their own group on the other, and Chinito (American-born as well, but of the previous generation) went between the two. “Well, those kids are aceitosos,” explained one - they were “slippery” characters. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you think they are here for? They’re here to steal the tricks of the guys who are playing!” “But that’s what kids learning how to play do!” I protested. “You can’t tell me that in Tatico’s time, kids weren’t going to his shows and doing the exact same thing.” He conceded this point, but it didn’t change his opinion of their characters.
About 3:00 the third and last set finally got started. I of course had to play a couple of tunes. Then Geno played a couple and his singer joined him, replacing Junior on lead vocals. This didn’t last long, though. One rather drunk seguidor (tipico fan) piped up to complain that the singer was out of tune. He kept up his loud complaints after the next song as well, saying that it “wasn’t out of disrespect” but he “knew a thing or two about music and tuning” and that “someone had to point out the truth.” This was annoying enough that the young man was forced to step down and surrender the mic to Junior again. However, several of us discussing the situation over by the bar agreed that, although the singer was indeed young and had a couple things to work on, we’d heard far worse, and in that very restaurant, no less. I wondered if the complainer was more annoyed by the singing or the fact that the singer was American-born and not yet a part of the transnational tipico crowd, the tightly knit family of musicians and seguidores I’d gotten to know over the years. I pondered the question, but not too much, as it was now past 4 AM and high time to hit the hay.
I passed another entertaining and beer-filled evening on Thursday with my friend Cathy, who showed me around her Astoria, Queens neighborhood, home to an old and huge Greek community and a somewhat newer Arab one. We started out at the Bohemian Beer Garden, a place I’d always meant to visit but never got around to. It is quite the popular place for a beer, with Czech and other interesting East European brews on draft, and its outdoor tables were the perfect spot on this clear, breezy summer evening. But Cathy told me that even just three years ago it hadn’t attracted the crowd of young partiers and hipsters (many of which appeared to hail from Brooklyn, especially Williamsburg) that were there with us. Somehow the word got out. We could have had pierogies and the like right there in the garden, but instead we went across the street to another classic Astoria haunt: Elias’s Corner for Fish, a Greek restaurant where one can get market-fresh fish grilled whole, Greek salads, and retsina. We ate well there, disturbed only by one Greek’s annoying wife, who knocked loudly and long on the window right next to us to attract his attention, gesticulating and making angry faces as he finished dinner with three friends at a neighboring table. Why she did this rather than simply enter and talk to him, perhaps enjoying a glass of retsina that she needed even more than the rest of us, is one of the mysteries of life. Clearly it was time to move on to the dessert portion of the evening, which we had at a corner café and pastry shop whose sidewalk tables were filled with chain-smoking men who tossed their butts not in ashtrays but in glasses of water the waitress brought to every table for just that purpose. The sight was not that appetizing, but the raspberry cake we had was attractive enough to distract us.
With less than a week left, I tried to squeeze in a couple more interviews, events, and visits. Tano promised to meet with me before I left. Would you believe him? No, me neither. My attempts to interview Geno, one of the young American-born accordionists around, also did not work. But then I paid a farewell visit to Arsenio de la Rosa and family in the Bronx, and though King had already left for the DR, we passed a pleasant couple of hours debating merengue history and discussing the interesting recordings I’d found in the Library of Congress. Joe, one of Arsenio’s six children and a hip hop producer, agreed to meet with me to talk about his work with Fulanito and his place in the de la Rosa tipico dynasty, and that did pan out when in an interview at the recording studio he uses.
Aside from these bits of work I also amused myself with friends, like paying a visit to Senti, seeing Tianna at a Stars Like Fleas soundcheck at Tonic, chatting with Danielle about applied ethnomusicology, and going to Red Hook with Hanna. By Saturday I’d already been staying at Hanna’s new Carroll Gardens apartment for several days, but because of our busy social schedules we’d barely seen each other. Thus, on Saturday we decided to do our grocery shopping at the new Fairway supermarket on the Red Hook waterfront, which Hanna promised would offer both gastronomic and surprisingly scenic experiences. Sure enough, it was probably the most picturesque grocery store I’d seen.
On Saturday evening, I decided to check out a ghetto block party Geno’s merengue tipico group would be playing at in the nether reaches of Bushwick, almost to the cemetery whose tombstones could be seen out the L train’s windows as we pulled into the station.. Naturally, when I arrived twenty minutes past the scheduled arrival time, I was almost the first there. I checked out the scene, which consisted of 1970s orquesta merengues blasting from the opposite end of the street, balloon and cotton candy vendors, people selling flan out of their house, and pony rides. This made a cheerful change from the usual, somewhat depressing landscape of flat-fronted brick apartment buildings, narrow houses in faded aluminum siding, and endless dirty asphalt and cement, with no greenery to break up the dismal color palette. Returning to my starting point I found the snubbed singer from Wednesday night at Macoris and another teenage guy I’d seen before both hanging out in front of Geno’s uncle’s bodega, and I joined them. At six, the time the band was supposed to start playing, neither musicians nor equipment was there so we retired to a nearby stoop to sit and discuss the merits of various tipico singers. Eventually Geno showed up with the equipment and other band members, and they went about setting up the instruments and speakers on one side of the store. The oldest of them was only twenty, and the tamborero much younger, perhaps fifteen. The weather, unseasonably chilly, began to look decidedly threatening: bad for me, as I’d left my umbrella at home, and certainly not good for all the electrical wiring now running around the sidewalk. While they finished their preparations, I amused myself by chatting with a couple of Lower East Side-born Dominicans, a plumber and a museum tour guide, who had flatly stated they didn’t believe I could actually play tipico. When the band finally started, I was pleasantly surprised to find that in spite of their age, they all played very well. The youthful tamborero and the guirero even took some solos that were quite impressive. I filmed a bit, since it isn’t often I get to see bands play when it’s still light out. But it did at last start drizzling - not bad enough to drive the assembled crowd away but enough to cause a couple of bodega emplyees to rig up a blue plastic tarp to protect the band and their instruments, tying it to the awning and some street signs and thus obstructing my view. Oh well, that freed me up to enjoy myself a bit, dancing with some local oldsters and buying myself a Corona in a paper bag from the bodega. At their break, the plumber and the guide accompanied me to consume a slice of dollar pizza across the way. Thus sated, I returned to chat with the musicians and they informed me that I HAD to play a couple of tunes as no one there believed I could actually play. Or speak Spanish. I knew I would play badly, not having practiced in a month, but in this situation a mediocre merengue would be better than no merengue. I took the stage, the accordion, and the mic, to make an announcement in Spanish just because I could. The crowd was pleased.
After this, many errands, an excellent dinner out with friend Hanna, a long trip and much hefting of overweight luggage, I now find myself back in Tucson. After seven years of drought the monsoons have finally kicked in and everything is happy and leafy, the mountains greener than I've seen them in 20 years. It's good to be home.
After all the excitement, I needed a couple of days to recover, reorganize, and re-move myself to Hanna’s apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. But on Wednesday night I was ready once again for fieldwork. It would be the last chance I’d get to go to Macoris for a while, and I needed to say goodbye to all my friends over there. And so I found myself once again on the J train to East New York at 11:00 at night. I arrived to find Leopoldo Santos already playing, the other tables occupied by people unknown to me, who turned out to be a group of Hondurans and a group of Dominicans visiting from North Carolina. Things were tame enough for the first set. In the second, more of my friends arrived, including Chinito (who took a turn on guira) and the US-born contingent, consisting of Geno and some of his bandmates.
When the second set finished it was already 2 AM and I was about ready for bed, but Leopoldo, Tano, Junior, Cesar, and Jesus wouldn’t hear of it: there was no way I could leave without playing, even if I hadn’t practiced in a month and was bound to play badly. So I passed the time with the musicians, standing around outside on the sidewalk as some smoked and the others gossipped. I had some gossip for them tonight, as my sources had told me that Aguakate was going to break up. The news came at a surprising time, as their new CD was coming out this very week, but apparently the lead singer Chino had decided that he wanted to go his own route. The musicians all agreed it had been a bad move to promote the band solely with Chino’s face and personality - even the t-shirt given out at Sunday’s Dominican Day parade had featured only a cartoon of him over the word “Aguakate” - leaving the rest of the band out of the picture entirely. This was especially silly, they thought, because the band members were all accomplished musicians while Chino didn’t even know how to sing, only knew how to be a “personality” and a stage presence. At this point I noticed how funny it was that I was standing on one side of the streetcorner with the Dominican-born musicians, while the American-born kids were standing in their own group on the other, and Chinito (American-born as well, but of the previous generation) went between the two. “Well, those kids are aceitosos,” explained one - they were “slippery” characters. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you think they are here for? They’re here to steal the tricks of the guys who are playing!” “But that’s what kids learning how to play do!” I protested. “You can’t tell me that in Tatico’s time, kids weren’t going to his shows and doing the exact same thing.” He conceded this point, but it didn’t change his opinion of their characters.
About 3:00 the third and last set finally got started. I of course had to play a couple of tunes. Then Geno played a couple and his singer joined him, replacing Junior on lead vocals. This didn’t last long, though. One rather drunk seguidor (tipico fan) piped up to complain that the singer was out of tune. He kept up his loud complaints after the next song as well, saying that it “wasn’t out of disrespect” but he “knew a thing or two about music and tuning” and that “someone had to point out the truth.” This was annoying enough that the young man was forced to step down and surrender the mic to Junior again. However, several of us discussing the situation over by the bar agreed that, although the singer was indeed young and had a couple things to work on, we’d heard far worse, and in that very restaurant, no less. I wondered if the complainer was more annoyed by the singing or the fact that the singer was American-born and not yet a part of the transnational tipico crowd, the tightly knit family of musicians and seguidores I’d gotten to know over the years. I pondered the question, but not too much, as it was now past 4 AM and high time to hit the hay.
I passed another entertaining and beer-filled evening on Thursday with my friend Cathy, who showed me around her Astoria, Queens neighborhood, home to an old and huge Greek community and a somewhat newer Arab one. We started out at the Bohemian Beer Garden, a place I’d always meant to visit but never got around to. It is quite the popular place for a beer, with Czech and other interesting East European brews on draft, and its outdoor tables were the perfect spot on this clear, breezy summer evening. But Cathy told me that even just three years ago it hadn’t attracted the crowd of young partiers and hipsters (many of which appeared to hail from Brooklyn, especially Williamsburg) that were there with us. Somehow the word got out. We could have had pierogies and the like right there in the garden, but instead we went across the street to another classic Astoria haunt: Elias’s Corner for Fish, a Greek restaurant where one can get market-fresh fish grilled whole, Greek salads, and retsina. We ate well there, disturbed only by one Greek’s annoying wife, who knocked loudly and long on the window right next to us to attract his attention, gesticulating and making angry faces as he finished dinner with three friends at a neighboring table. Why she did this rather than simply enter and talk to him, perhaps enjoying a glass of retsina that she needed even more than the rest of us, is one of the mysteries of life. Clearly it was time to move on to the dessert portion of the evening, which we had at a corner café and pastry shop whose sidewalk tables were filled with chain-smoking men who tossed their butts not in ashtrays but in glasses of water the waitress brought to every table for just that purpose. The sight was not that appetizing, but the raspberry cake we had was attractive enough to distract us.
With less than a week left, I tried to squeeze in a couple more interviews, events, and visits. Tano promised to meet with me before I left. Would you believe him? No, me neither. My attempts to interview Geno, one of the young American-born accordionists around, also did not work. But then I paid a farewell visit to Arsenio de la Rosa and family in the Bronx, and though King had already left for the DR, we passed a pleasant couple of hours debating merengue history and discussing the interesting recordings I’d found in the Library of Congress. Joe, one of Arsenio’s six children and a hip hop producer, agreed to meet with me to talk about his work with Fulanito and his place in the de la Rosa tipico dynasty, and that did pan out when in an interview at the recording studio he uses.
Aside from these bits of work I also amused myself with friends, like paying a visit to Senti, seeing Tianna at a Stars Like Fleas soundcheck at Tonic, chatting with Danielle about applied ethnomusicology, and going to Red Hook with Hanna. By Saturday I’d already been staying at Hanna’s new Carroll Gardens apartment for several days, but because of our busy social schedules we’d barely seen each other. Thus, on Saturday we decided to do our grocery shopping at the new Fairway supermarket on the Red Hook waterfront, which Hanna promised would offer both gastronomic and surprisingly scenic experiences. Sure enough, it was probably the most picturesque grocery store I’d seen.
On Saturday evening, I decided to check out a ghetto block party Geno’s merengue tipico group would be playing at in the nether reaches of Bushwick, almost to the cemetery whose tombstones could be seen out the L train’s windows as we pulled into the station.. Naturally, when I arrived twenty minutes past the scheduled arrival time, I was almost the first there. I checked out the scene, which consisted of 1970s orquesta merengues blasting from the opposite end of the street, balloon and cotton candy vendors, people selling flan out of their house, and pony rides. This made a cheerful change from the usual, somewhat depressing landscape of flat-fronted brick apartment buildings, narrow houses in faded aluminum siding, and endless dirty asphalt and cement, with no greenery to break up the dismal color palette. Returning to my starting point I found the snubbed singer from Wednesday night at Macoris and another teenage guy I’d seen before both hanging out in front of Geno’s uncle’s bodega, and I joined them. At six, the time the band was supposed to start playing, neither musicians nor equipment was there so we retired to a nearby stoop to sit and discuss the merits of various tipico singers. Eventually Geno showed up with the equipment and other band members, and they went about setting up the instruments and speakers on one side of the store. The oldest of them was only twenty, and the tamborero much younger, perhaps fifteen. The weather, unseasonably chilly, began to look decidedly threatening: bad for me, as I’d left my umbrella at home, and certainly not good for all the electrical wiring now running around the sidewalk. While they finished their preparations, I amused myself by chatting with a couple of Lower East Side-born Dominicans, a plumber and a museum tour guide, who had flatly stated they didn’t believe I could actually play tipico. When the band finally started, I was pleasantly surprised to find that in spite of their age, they all played very well. The youthful tamborero and the guirero even took some solos that were quite impressive. I filmed a bit, since it isn’t often I get to see bands play when it’s still light out. But it did at last start drizzling - not bad enough to drive the assembled crowd away but enough to cause a couple of bodega emplyees to rig up a blue plastic tarp to protect the band and their instruments, tying it to the awning and some street signs and thus obstructing my view. Oh well, that freed me up to enjoy myself a bit, dancing with some local oldsters and buying myself a Corona in a paper bag from the bodega. At their break, the plumber and the guide accompanied me to consume a slice of dollar pizza across the way. Thus sated, I returned to chat with the musicians and they informed me that I HAD to play a couple of tunes as no one there believed I could actually play. Or speak Spanish. I knew I would play badly, not having practiced in a month, but in this situation a mediocre merengue would be better than no merengue. I took the stage, the accordion, and the mic, to make an announcement in Spanish just because I could. The crowd was pleased.
After this, many errands, an excellent dinner out with friend Hanna, a long trip and much hefting of overweight luggage, I now find myself back in Tucson. After seven years of drought the monsoons have finally kicked in and everything is happy and leafy, the mountains greener than I've seen them in 20 years. It's good to be home.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Aguakate in Washington Heights
Aguakate plays at Dominican Day festival on Amsterdam Ave., Washington Heights.
Aguakate in Dominican Day Parade
Aguakate band members on their float for the 2006 Dominican Day Parade.
Chino on the news
Chino, Aguakate's frontman, gets interviewed for Spanish-language news in front of Aguakate's float for the Dominican Day parade.
Dominican Day Parade
8/12-8/13
It was the weekend of the Dominican Day parade in New York. I’d never been before, just because I don’t feel much attraction to the idea of being crushed in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people under the sun for hours on end. But I figured I ought to check it out before I leave. The parade itself wasn’t until Sunday, but the festivities started on Saturday in Washington Heights, where a couple of blocks of Amsterdam Avenue (from about 191 to 194) had been closed off to make way for food and vendor stalls and two stages, one at either end. The street’s topography worked pretty well for security purposes: a steep cliff rises up on the west side and another one drops straight down to the East River on the other side, so one could only enter at one of the ends where police had set up barriers and were checking bags. Mine passed muster so I went in.
The music hadn’t started yet, so I examined the booths (Interboro college, Chevrolet, Citibank, and Lemisol feminine wash were all represented) and the food offerings (there seemed, oddly, to be more Puerto Rican and Colombian restaurants represented than Dominican ones). I got myself a crabmeat empanada and a cheese-filled Colombian arepa, then a mango juice to round off the meal. There was a DJ at work but he didnt play any merengue tipico the whole time, mostly only merengue de orquesta and reggaeton. But eventually things started happening on stage. First, three girls barely in their teens wearing red tops and extremely short white skirts, dancing reggaeton rather well. After a few minutes they were joined by three slightly older girls in much more modest overalls. They were actually pretty good with the reggaeton-style rapping, though it’s not my favorite type of music. The second act was also girls singing reggaeton (is this a new New York Dominican thing?), but this time just a pair of them in camouflage outfits. As they performed some actual instruments were being set up behind them, and soon enough I saw that the guitar belonged to Edilio Paredes, a musician I’ve known for some time, known mostly for his bachata guitar work but also started playing accordion a few years back and is now very good on that too. He plays with a bunch of bands like Super Uba, but today was backing up some singer called “Nelson Maicky,” whoever that is. So even though I was kind of tired of the sun in my eyes, my perch on the edge of a metal traffic barrier, and the stupid wasp that seemed enamored of me and my sun block, I stuck around for a bit to see. But only for a little bit. There would be plenty more of this tomorrow, I was sure.
My old friend Alejandro, bass player for Aguakate, had informed me that his group would be performing on a float in the parade. He suggested I join up with them so as to avoid the madding crowds. This sounded like a good idea but there was some confusion about where and when they’d be meeting. After several rounds of phone calls, we got it all figured out and I went up to find them on 38th street, where the block between 5th and 6th avenues had been closed off to allow the floats, marchers, and all space in which to prepare themselves. On the way up, I bought a Dominican flag bandana to tie to a belt loop and show my spirit, and then found myself unexpectedly accompanied by several dozen teenagers in patriotic Dominican bandanas, t-shirts, and even the occasional umbrella hat. Several of them had guiras and one had a tambora, and they went along playing merengue rhythms and improvising rousing choruses. As they passed by one footwear store on 34th Street, one of the salesmen (apparently Dominican) came out and led them in a chant: “We got shoes! We got shoes!”
Up on 38th, I strolled around examining the offerings, which included floats for products like La Mazorca corn oil and Vitarroz rice, music companies like one for “Hip hop Dominican style,” and organizations like the Centro Civico (Dominican Civic Center) in Washington Heights. The Tamboril community organization for Dominican immigrants from that town near Santiago also had its own truck. Besides all the Dominican businesses and groups there was also a Mexican marching band and a big decorated Colombian bus with all kinds of sacks strapped on top as if it were about to make a long journey through some mountain towns, though with a bunch of Dominican flags stuck on the side for the occasion. Not on floats but getting into their costumes to work the parade route on foot were carnival groups representing Las Guloyas (a cocolo tradition), the city of La Vega and the town of Cabral, where I’d been for carnival just a few months before. I was surprised to recognize their cachua costumes and went over for a closer look. Imagine my surprise to find one of them was actually Temistocle, whose house I’d visited in order to purchase one of his homemade, multicolored whips. He’d come to New York for two weeks just for this occasion, teaching New York Dominican kids about the cachua tradition in the process. I also found another accordionist I knew, Fidel, was performing with his band on the Mazorca float. Good to see tipico would be well represented in the parade.
We had been told to be there at 12 noon, and to make this schedule the musicians of Aguakate had gone without any sleep at all. They’d been playing a gig in some other state - Connecticut? - and only arrived back in the city around 7 AM, then had to meet at Peligro’s store again at 10 AM. That was just about enough time to change clothes and eat. Fat lot of good it did - we spent three hours standing around, fueled only by the beer and rum some members had brought or purchased nearby. Members entertained themselves by improvising verses over their microphones to accompany the carnival percussion group composed of kids in custom airbrushed t-shirts featuring the likenesses of Dominican baseball players or else green plantains and the label “platano,” another word for Dominicans abroad. Some people strolling by stopped to get the autograph of or take pictures with Chino, Aguakate’s frontman. I took advantage of the moment to snap my own shot. But we were all glad when at last the floats began to move (though of course the driver had disappeared at that point and had to be located by making announcements over the float’s sound system).
No one was allowed on the float other than band members and the people representing the phone card company that sponsored it (girls in short tops and guys handing out free Aguakate t-shirts to the crowd). So I was relegated to walking alongside it with Peligro, his cousin, and assorted teenage rabblerousers sporting the official t-shirts and getting the crowd pumped up with their enthusiasm and antics. I hadn’t really expected to be IN the parade, but in fact I found it quite enjoyable for four blocks to walk along Sixth Avenue, right past Bryant Park, and smile at the thousands of flag-waving Dominicans. But at 42nd street the float made an unexpected right turn, allowing the Mexican marching band to move ahead of us up the avenue. I soon found out that we’d been pulled from the parade as one of those boys on the ground had resisted a police officer trying to pull him out, apparently not knowing he was a participant. He’d been handcuffed for this and the entire group pulled as a result. There was some talk about circling back around and rejoining the parade where we’d started, but this never happened, and when we came back around to Sixth Ave the whole thing had already passed, leaving only streets full of trash and streetsweeping machines. Peligro, his cousin, some of the troublemakers, and I then passed an inordinate amount of time wandering around midtown Manhattan trying to reunite with the band, which eventually we did, over on Eighth Ave where they had just gone ahead and started dismantling the float covered in green, white, and yellow streamers. Alejandro said, “this is why I hired someone else to play in my place in last year’s parade.” But I was still glad I’d gone.
Aguakate still had three more gigs to play that day before they could sleep. I decided to accompany them to the next, which was up on Amsterdam and 191st, where I’d been the day before. I hung out with them and the other bands backstage before they went on, avoiding the crowds, much larger and crazier than the day before, then went around front to film while they were on. Chino got a little political, commenting unfavorably on the new law enacted by DR President Leonel Fernandez a couple of weeks ago, which prohibits nightclubs from having live music after midnight and weekdays and after 2 AM on weekends. I, on the other hand, was more than a little in favor of this measure, which will make my fieldwork much easier next year!
I expected to be able to return to my Upper West Side digs quickly, as it was really only ten stops away on the 1 train. But I hadn’t seen the crowds wandering the streets of Washington Heights in celebration of Dominican pride. The police had blocked off Amsterdam so effectively that there was a huge pedestrian traffic jam at the 190th street exit from the festival, since only a trickle of people could get through the single-file opening they’d left. Once I made it through that, I had to walk over to Broadway through masses of people, many of them enjoying the antics of passers by from the comfort of lawn chairs they’d lined up along the sidewalks in front of their apartment buildings. Getting into the elevator down to the train platform and them moving along that platform was no picnic, either. Eventually I managed to get on a train, and feeling much relieved, settled down to read my book. But the train stopped at 168th Street and we were waiting for a long, long time, held up in the station for unknown reasons. A couple of guys on my car were making a lot of rambunctious noise. I didn’t know if they were troublemakers or simply in high spirits, so I kept my eyes on them, and when I saw that one was had a large knife stuck into the front of his waistband I decided switching cars might be a good idea. I did this, and just as I’d sat down the conductor announced the doors were malfunctioning and we’d all have to get off. I exited the train and heard someone call my name. Another surprise: it was Luis, a guy I’d known from the Centro Leon in Santiago. I didn’t recognize him at first in his baseball cap, jeans, and jersey, having only seen him in his work attire of khaki pants and long-sleeve, button-down shirts before. Small world!
I was doubly glad to be with someone I knew another minute later. As the crowd waited on the platform, two different gangs had met two cars down for us and they started fighting. Not knowing what kind of weaponry they might have on them, we all started to run, and as I did so, I thought of stories of people getting crushed in stampeding crowds.. Luis guided me and his other friends by the elbow to a less crowded staircase, and we sprinted up to find the elevator open but full and just about to leave. We pressed ourselves in anyway and went up. At the top we stopped to catch our breath and decide what to do next. I thought of going up and taking the bus instead, but Luis cautioned that it could be as bad or worse on the topside. Instead we waited until we saw police go down and figured things had calmed enough to descend once again. I got home safe and sound, and just in time for Hanna to come by for happy hour.
It was the weekend of the Dominican Day parade in New York. I’d never been before, just because I don’t feel much attraction to the idea of being crushed in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people under the sun for hours on end. But I figured I ought to check it out before I leave. The parade itself wasn’t until Sunday, but the festivities started on Saturday in Washington Heights, where a couple of blocks of Amsterdam Avenue (from about 191 to 194) had been closed off to make way for food and vendor stalls and two stages, one at either end. The street’s topography worked pretty well for security purposes: a steep cliff rises up on the west side and another one drops straight down to the East River on the other side, so one could only enter at one of the ends where police had set up barriers and were checking bags. Mine passed muster so I went in.
The music hadn’t started yet, so I examined the booths (Interboro college, Chevrolet, Citibank, and Lemisol feminine wash were all represented) and the food offerings (there seemed, oddly, to be more Puerto Rican and Colombian restaurants represented than Dominican ones). I got myself a crabmeat empanada and a cheese-filled Colombian arepa, then a mango juice to round off the meal. There was a DJ at work but he didnt play any merengue tipico the whole time, mostly only merengue de orquesta and reggaeton. But eventually things started happening on stage. First, three girls barely in their teens wearing red tops and extremely short white skirts, dancing reggaeton rather well. After a few minutes they were joined by three slightly older girls in much more modest overalls. They were actually pretty good with the reggaeton-style rapping, though it’s not my favorite type of music. The second act was also girls singing reggaeton (is this a new New York Dominican thing?), but this time just a pair of them in camouflage outfits. As they performed some actual instruments were being set up behind them, and soon enough I saw that the guitar belonged to Edilio Paredes, a musician I’ve known for some time, known mostly for his bachata guitar work but also started playing accordion a few years back and is now very good on that too. He plays with a bunch of bands like Super Uba, but today was backing up some singer called “Nelson Maicky,” whoever that is. So even though I was kind of tired of the sun in my eyes, my perch on the edge of a metal traffic barrier, and the stupid wasp that seemed enamored of me and my sun block, I stuck around for a bit to see. But only for a little bit. There would be plenty more of this tomorrow, I was sure.
My old friend Alejandro, bass player for Aguakate, had informed me that his group would be performing on a float in the parade. He suggested I join up with them so as to avoid the madding crowds. This sounded like a good idea but there was some confusion about where and when they’d be meeting. After several rounds of phone calls, we got it all figured out and I went up to find them on 38th street, where the block between 5th and 6th avenues had been closed off to allow the floats, marchers, and all space in which to prepare themselves. On the way up, I bought a Dominican flag bandana to tie to a belt loop and show my spirit, and then found myself unexpectedly accompanied by several dozen teenagers in patriotic Dominican bandanas, t-shirts, and even the occasional umbrella hat. Several of them had guiras and one had a tambora, and they went along playing merengue rhythms and improvising rousing choruses. As they passed by one footwear store on 34th Street, one of the salesmen (apparently Dominican) came out and led them in a chant: “We got shoes! We got shoes!”
Up on 38th, I strolled around examining the offerings, which included floats for products like La Mazorca corn oil and Vitarroz rice, music companies like one for “Hip hop Dominican style,” and organizations like the Centro Civico (Dominican Civic Center) in Washington Heights. The Tamboril community organization for Dominican immigrants from that town near Santiago also had its own truck. Besides all the Dominican businesses and groups there was also a Mexican marching band and a big decorated Colombian bus with all kinds of sacks strapped on top as if it were about to make a long journey through some mountain towns, though with a bunch of Dominican flags stuck on the side for the occasion. Not on floats but getting into their costumes to work the parade route on foot were carnival groups representing Las Guloyas (a cocolo tradition), the city of La Vega and the town of Cabral, where I’d been for carnival just a few months before. I was surprised to recognize their cachua costumes and went over for a closer look. Imagine my surprise to find one of them was actually Temistocle, whose house I’d visited in order to purchase one of his homemade, multicolored whips. He’d come to New York for two weeks just for this occasion, teaching New York Dominican kids about the cachua tradition in the process. I also found another accordionist I knew, Fidel, was performing with his band on the Mazorca float. Good to see tipico would be well represented in the parade.
We had been told to be there at 12 noon, and to make this schedule the musicians of Aguakate had gone without any sleep at all. They’d been playing a gig in some other state - Connecticut? - and only arrived back in the city around 7 AM, then had to meet at Peligro’s store again at 10 AM. That was just about enough time to change clothes and eat. Fat lot of good it did - we spent three hours standing around, fueled only by the beer and rum some members had brought or purchased nearby. Members entertained themselves by improvising verses over their microphones to accompany the carnival percussion group composed of kids in custom airbrushed t-shirts featuring the likenesses of Dominican baseball players or else green plantains and the label “platano,” another word for Dominicans abroad. Some people strolling by stopped to get the autograph of or take pictures with Chino, Aguakate’s frontman. I took advantage of the moment to snap my own shot. But we were all glad when at last the floats began to move (though of course the driver had disappeared at that point and had to be located by making announcements over the float’s sound system).
No one was allowed on the float other than band members and the people representing the phone card company that sponsored it (girls in short tops and guys handing out free Aguakate t-shirts to the crowd). So I was relegated to walking alongside it with Peligro, his cousin, and assorted teenage rabblerousers sporting the official t-shirts and getting the crowd pumped up with their enthusiasm and antics. I hadn’t really expected to be IN the parade, but in fact I found it quite enjoyable for four blocks to walk along Sixth Avenue, right past Bryant Park, and smile at the thousands of flag-waving Dominicans. But at 42nd street the float made an unexpected right turn, allowing the Mexican marching band to move ahead of us up the avenue. I soon found out that we’d been pulled from the parade as one of those boys on the ground had resisted a police officer trying to pull him out, apparently not knowing he was a participant. He’d been handcuffed for this and the entire group pulled as a result. There was some talk about circling back around and rejoining the parade where we’d started, but this never happened, and when we came back around to Sixth Ave the whole thing had already passed, leaving only streets full of trash and streetsweeping machines. Peligro, his cousin, some of the troublemakers, and I then passed an inordinate amount of time wandering around midtown Manhattan trying to reunite with the band, which eventually we did, over on Eighth Ave where they had just gone ahead and started dismantling the float covered in green, white, and yellow streamers. Alejandro said, “this is why I hired someone else to play in my place in last year’s parade.” But I was still glad I’d gone.
Aguakate still had three more gigs to play that day before they could sleep. I decided to accompany them to the next, which was up on Amsterdam and 191st, where I’d been the day before. I hung out with them and the other bands backstage before they went on, avoiding the crowds, much larger and crazier than the day before, then went around front to film while they were on. Chino got a little political, commenting unfavorably on the new law enacted by DR President Leonel Fernandez a couple of weeks ago, which prohibits nightclubs from having live music after midnight and weekdays and after 2 AM on weekends. I, on the other hand, was more than a little in favor of this measure, which will make my fieldwork much easier next year!
I expected to be able to return to my Upper West Side digs quickly, as it was really only ten stops away on the 1 train. But I hadn’t seen the crowds wandering the streets of Washington Heights in celebration of Dominican pride. The police had blocked off Amsterdam so effectively that there was a huge pedestrian traffic jam at the 190th street exit from the festival, since only a trickle of people could get through the single-file opening they’d left. Once I made it through that, I had to walk over to Broadway through masses of people, many of them enjoying the antics of passers by from the comfort of lawn chairs they’d lined up along the sidewalks in front of their apartment buildings. Getting into the elevator down to the train platform and them moving along that platform was no picnic, either. Eventually I managed to get on a train, and feeling much relieved, settled down to read my book. But the train stopped at 168th Street and we were waiting for a long, long time, held up in the station for unknown reasons. A couple of guys on my car were making a lot of rambunctious noise. I didn’t know if they were troublemakers or simply in high spirits, so I kept my eyes on them, and when I saw that one was had a large knife stuck into the front of his waistband I decided switching cars might be a good idea. I did this, and just as I’d sat down the conductor announced the doors were malfunctioning and we’d all have to get off. I exited the train and heard someone call my name. Another surprise: it was Luis, a guy I’d known from the Centro Leon in Santiago. I didn’t recognize him at first in his baseball cap, jeans, and jersey, having only seen him in his work attire of khaki pants and long-sleeve, button-down shirts before. Small world!
I was doubly glad to be with someone I knew another minute later. As the crowd waited on the platform, two different gangs had met two cars down for us and they started fighting. Not knowing what kind of weaponry they might have on them, we all started to run, and as I did so, I thought of stories of people getting crushed in stampeding crowds.. Luis guided me and his other friends by the elbow to a less crowded staircase, and we sprinted up to find the elevator open but full and just about to leave. We pressed ourselves in anyway and went up. At the top we stopped to catch our breath and decide what to do next. I thought of going up and taking the bus instead, but Luis cautioned that it could be as bad or worse on the topside. Instead we waited until we saw police go down and figured things had calmed enough to descend once again. I got home safe and sound, and just in time for Hanna to come by for happy hour.
Dominican Day parade- cachua
This guy in a cachua costume is actually Temistocle, whose house I visited in Cabral back in April! He made my whip, which is much like the one over his shoulder in this picture.
Monday, August 14, 2006
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