THE JAZZ TINGE IN DOMINICAN MUSIC: A BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE.

Since its inception, jazz has developed in dialogue with Afro-Latin musics; as Jelly Roll Morton affirmed, "Spanish tinges" were integral to early jazz in the quintessentially Caribbean city of New Orleans (quoted in Lomax 1973, 63). The two world wars spread North American popular culture along with U.S. hegemony, and jazz was subsequently domesticated worldwide. Especially fertile fusions of jazz and local musics developed in African-influenced music cultures (see Averill 1989; Coplan 1985; Pickney 1989). Afro-Cuban jazz became internationally known in the 1940s under the influence of Cuban musicians Machito, Mario Bauza, and Chano Pozo and of bebopper Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie once wrote about his rapport with Pozo: "Since Chano couldn't speak English, people always asked, `Well, how do you communicate?' `Deehee no peek pani, me no peek Angli, bo peek African,' Chano would answer [Dizzy no speak Spanish, I no speak English, but we both speak African]" (Gillespie and Fraser 1979, 318). Similarly, Machito once said that the merging of jazz with "the rhythms of Cuban music was not a conventional union--it was a marriage of love" (quoted in Waxer 1994, 154). But black Atlantic musics are a variegated constellation not a uniform soundscape; as Paul Gilroy (1993a, 109) affirms, "Race carries with it no corona of fixed absolute meanings." The study of music in the African diaspora thus "involves struggling with one question in particular. It is the puzzle of what analytic status should be given to the variation ... between black cultures which their musical habits reveal" (Gilroy 1993b, 79-80). While Latin jazz developed into a full-fleged genre in New York City (see Roberts 1979), jazz tinges became important in Dominican popular music. This article critically considers the history of the jazz tinge in Dominican music, tracing its reception and stylistic development.

The Dominican Republic's population is estimated at 80 percent mixed African and European, 15 percent black, and 5 percent white; Dominican sociologist Pedro Perez Cabral (1967, 75) aptly calls his country a "comunidad mulata," or mixed-race community. The African element in this mix is cardinal; as Martha Ellen Davis (1976, 2) attests, the Dominican Republic "without doubt, should be considered an Afro-American nation--that is, a New World nation in which the African cultural influence figures prominently, if not predominantly." Unlike Africans and the British, however, Africans and Iberians were not strangers when they met in the Americas; the two groups had shared lifeways for over seven hundred years during the Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula. The occupying forces in Spain came from as far away as Timbuktu (Ortiz 1952-1955, 3:64), and many of those who came to the Caribbean from Spain were "free settlers of partial African descent" (Curtin 1969, 31). By the end of the eighteenth century, black and mixed-race freedmen outnumbered both whites and slaves in colonial Santo Domingo.

The Spanish colony of Santo Domingo was founded in 1493 by Christopher Columbus. Its western third was ceded to France in 1697, and the Republic of Haiti was founded there in 1804 as the result of a successful slave uprising. With the ideal of ridding the entire island of colonialism and slavery, Haiti invaded Spanish Santo Domingo, unifying the island in 1822. Although Dominican slaves welcomed the Haitians, the Eurocentric ruling classes looked disfavorably on the Haitian occupation, repelling the invaders and proclaiming the independence of the Dominican Republic--from Haiti and not from Spain--in 1844. Since then, the Dominican upper classes have consistently propagated a Eurocentric notion of national identity that stands in stark contrast to the highly African-influenced culture of their country's majority.

The ensuing racial and cultural ambivalence is, as Frantz Fanon puts it, "inherent" to "the colonial situation" (1967, 83; see also Herskovits 1937, 295-296; Bourguignon 1951, 1969; Wilcken 1992; Austerlitz 1997, 7). After Spain's retreat as an imperial power and the rise of the United States as a world power, this ambivalence became directed at the northern neighbor; Dominicans became antagonistic toward North American intervention in their politics but were simultaneously attracted to Yankee wealth and modernity. This article argues that the prime determinants of Dominican adaptations of jazz have been the rapport that Dominican musicians feel with jazz as a result of shared African-derived aesthetics on one hand and the negotiation of mixed feelings resulting from North American neocolonialism on the other.

The Dominican Republic's musics reflect its Afro-Hispanic ethnicity. Neo-African forms, indispensable to rural religious ceremonies, predominate. These include palos and congo long drum music of the Afro-Dominican religious brotherhoods and a celebratory processional form called gaga, performed on one-note trumpets and percussion during Holy Week. Less prevalent than the neo-African forms, European musics such as sung prayers called salves sagradas are also significant in the soundscape. Lying between the extremes of African and European influence is a large repertory of syncretic musics such as the mangulina, bachata, and merengue (see Austerlitz 1997; Davis 1976, 1981; Hernandez Soto and Sanchez 1997; Pacini Hernandez 1995).

Dating from the mid-nineteenth century, the earliest references to merengue describe it as a ballroom dance music related to the pan-Caribbean danza, which had developed from the stately European contredanse. Merengue was distinguished by the fact that it was danced by independent couples (rather than in groups) and by its Afro-Caribbean rhythmic tinges. After a short heyday in Dominican ballrooms, it was rejected by Eurocentric elites because of its dance style, which was considered lewd, and because of its African elements. The rural Dominican majority, however, adopted merengue and infused it with even more African influences. Merengue variants with various instrumentations developed in several areas of the Dominican Republic, but only the Cibao region's version gained prominence. By the early twentieth century, merengue tipico cibaeno (Cibao-style folk merengue)--performed on the tambora (a double-headed drum), the guira (a metal scraper), the button accordion, and the alto saxophone--was the top social dance in Cibao's countryside and barrios (lower-class urban neighborhoods).

The merengue accordion and saxophone style is based on riffs called jaleos that dovetail with tambora and guira rhythms and dance movements in a typically African-influenced aesthetic. In addition to playing jaleos, early merengue saxophonists improvised twisting lines in counterpoint with the accordion and tambora; as a Cibao native who attended many merengue fiestas in the early twentieth century said, saxophonists "used to embellish and play lots of scales and beautiful things: very beautiful. Their accompaniment went up, and down.... It went out of the merengue yet stayed within the rhythm" (Pichardo 1985; unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine).(1) The similarity of the early merengue saxophone style to jazz improvisation begs the question of possible jazz influence. Merengue groups, however, were using the saxophone prior to the period of U.S. influence in the Dominican Republic: wind instruments were already present in merengue in the late nineteenth century, and the saxophone was important to rural merengue in the 1910s (see Hoetink 1982, 206; Rodriguez-Demorizi 1971, 87; Pichardo n.d.). The aesthetic link between early merengue and jazz, then, may well result as much from shared musical ingredients as from North American influence; both musics were spawned by the union of African and European sensibilities. The Dominican folklorist Esteban Pena-Morell once turned the question of possible jazz influence on early merengue on its head by facetiously asking, "Did jazz originate in Santo Domingo?" ("Nacio el jazz" 1931).

A closer look at early merengue's stylistic history illuminates the path that the mingling of African and European sensibilities took in the Dominican Republic. Dominican composer Julio Alberto Hernandez remembers that baritone horn players injected tinges of local Afro-Caribbean flavor into the stately European-derived danza: "The baritone played a special role [in the danza]. It performed a rhythmic accompaniment.... They improvised tipico rhythms, tropical rhythms, which had a certain character.... There were some excellent baritone players, with special embouchures. Often, people listened to the baritone rather than dance" (Hernandez 1985). Emulating the salon orquestas, lower-class merengue musicians occasionally incorporated baritone horns into their groups. According to Cibao musicians who were active during the early twentieth century, the alto saxophone was first used in merengue on occasions when a baritone player was not available (Alberti 1975, 87). Early merengue saxophone playing was thus based on the baritone style. Saxophonist Antonio Lora, who was active in the early part of the twentieth century; explains that an approach more consonant with the percussive textures of the tambora and accordion soon emerged: "The saxophone was the best instrument ... for tipico music. The baritone sounded terrible; it sounded like a trombone. The saxophone ... complemented the accordion better" (Lora 1985). Hernandez adds that the "saxophone accompaniment came from the danza. But since saxophones are more flexible than baritones, ... well, they played lots of variations and pirouettes, up and down" (Hernandez 1985). Pedro "Cacu" Lora and Avelino Vasquez were the first saxophonists to play merengue regularly and are considered the architects of the original merengue saxophone style.

The Dominican Republic saw severe economic difficulties in the early twentieth century and its European creditors threatened to send battleships to collect unpaid debts. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson found the possibility of a European military presence in the Caribbean unacceptable and, evoking Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (which called for the United States to thwart European aggression in Latin America), ordered a U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic on May 5, 1916. In the following year, the U.S. Marines established a military government that ruled the country until 1924. Dominicans did not take the U.S. occupation sitting down; rural populations waged a guerrilla war, while the urban upper classes mounted an international program of protest on the diplomatic front. The program was successful; Bruce Calder (1984, 241) argues that it eventually forced the United States to "abandon the occupation." Associated with the diplomatic campaign, a virulent cultural nationalism fomented the embrace of all things Dominican. But at the same time, many Dominicans were attracted to the North American popular culture that the U.S. Marines brought. These competing tendencies were at the crux of Dominican musicality in this period.

At the outset of the occupation, upper-class Dominicans had European tastes in music, rejecting both local rustic Afro-Caribbean music and modernistic North American imports in favor of the waltz, polka, danza, and the Cuban danzon. But the patriotic mood inspired composers in the Cibao city of Santiago de los Caballeros (Santiago of the Gentlemen) to write romantic nationalist art music based on merengue and other local forms. Influenced by this trend, Juan Espinola's Cibao dance band gained fame by performing refined, danza-like merengue arrangements for ballroom dancing (Inchaustegui 1974). In 1921, Juan Pablo "Pavin" Tolentino founded Orquesta Bohemia, which soon displaced Espinola's group as the Cibao's premiere orquesta. Like Espinola, Tolentino began by specializing in the Cuban danzon, which called for two clarinets, comet, baritone horn, string bass, and percussion. The growing popularity of North American music, however, manifested itself in the group's changing instrumentation; within a decade, Orquesta Bohemia had become a jazz band consisting of three saxophones (or clarinets), comet, violin, baritone horn, tuba, banjo, trap drums, and percussion (Tolentino 1985). Pianist Luis Alberti brought a new group on the scene in 1928, and with North American music in full vogue, he called it Jazz Band-Alberti.(2) Orquesta Bohemia and Alberti's groups vied for position as the city's most authentic jazz voices; when Orquesta Bohemia added a banjo, Alberti had to get one too (Inchaustegui 1973).

As one can imagine, the jazz vogue did not meet a wholly favorable reaction in the face of the anti-Yankee sentiment that reigned during and after the occupation; at one point, musicians even "boycotted" North American music (Alberti 1975, 30). In 1933, Alberti had the original idea of taking the bite out of jazz's popularity by performing merengues with big band jazz instrumentation. Tolentino's Orquesta Bohemia followed suit, reinforcing its regular band with a tipico merengue group consisting of accordion, tambora, and guira (Inchaustegui 1973). The tambora, guira, and accordion were permanently incorporated into Alberti and Tolentino's groups,(3) and merengue soon found a permanent, though small, place in the Cibao dance band repertories; a practice of ending every ball with a merengue developed (Alberti 1975, 29; Tolentino 1985). It was precisely the neocolonial experience that had piqued the Cibao elites' interest in merengue; prior to the occupation, they had rejected local forms.

Some of tipico saxophone pioneer Avelino Vasquez's younger relatives, who had been playing in Orquesta Bohemia, started their own group in 1932. Orquesta los Hermanos Vasquez (The Vasquez Brothers) soon became the number one dance band of the region and remained popular into the late 1940s. The street where many of the Vasquez's lived and where the band rehearsed came to be known as "La Calle Alegria" ("Happy Street") because the band's rehearsals were so enjoyable that people gathered to listen and dance. Orquesta los Hermanos Vasquez included several excellent saxophonists, who conducted innovative experiments in applying merengue accordion jaleos to the saxophone section of a jazz-style big band. Hernandez (1969, 61) has written about the role of the musical activity on Calle Alegria in the development of the merengue saxophone style:

   The role of the saxophone in merengue acquired its traditional
   characteristics thanks to the contributions of celebrated popular musicians
   of Santiago, such as Pedro "Cacu" and the Vasquez family, who converted the
   alley known as "Happy Street" into a quarry of saxophonistic gyrations
   which served as the model for the modern orchestration of our tipico dance.

The fusion of the essence of merengue cibaeno--saxophone riffs or jaleos--with jazz was the heart of the national music's simultaneous link with local and cosmopolitan culture. Equally important was its spicy danceability.

Meanwhile, rural and working-class cibaenos continued to dance to accordion-based merengue. Two types of merengue tipico cibaeno were current (and both are still played today): a sectional form with parts denominated paseo, merengue, and jaleo, and a one-part form called the pambiche. Although it is probable that both existed before the U.S. occupation, the pambiche is often said to have originated during this period. As the story goes, U.S. Marines sometimes went to local fiestas but were unable to dance merengue correctly, combining fox-trot steps with merengue steps. Imitating the North Americans, Dominicans in the town of Puerto Plata created a dance step called "Yankee-style merengue" (merengue estilo yanqui), which was accompanied by a syncopated tambora rhythm. The new dance became associated with a song about a fabric called "Palm-Beach" (as in the Florida city):

   Palm-Beach es mejor que dril,
   Y es mejor que el casmir.
   Con el yo voy a fiestar,
   Y con mi novia a bailar.

   Palm Beach is better than drill,
   And it is better than cashmere;
   I will celebrate with it
   And dance with my girlfriend.
   (Alberti 1975, 79)

The new style came to be called pambiche, a Dominicanization of the Americanism "Palm Beach"; just as the Palm Beach fabric was neither cashmere nor drill, the pambiche was neither fox-trot nor merengue. The anecdote about the pambiche's origin turns occupation-era power relations on their head: Dominicans couldn't contend with U.S. military might, but their superiority on the dance floor was unquestioned, and they even created a new genre out of the U.S. Marines' choreographic ineptness!(4)

The Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo rose to power in 1930. Despite his own African blood and although his own grandmother was of Haitian descent, Trujillo espoused a racist idea of Dominicanness that excluded explicit links to Africa and Haiti from officially sanctioned national culture. The extremity of Trujillo's anti-Haitianism was epitomized in his 1937 massacre, evocative of the Nazi holocaust, of from twelve to forty thousand Haitians who resided in the Dominican Republic. Also like the European fascists, Trujillo believed that folklore can be a potent symbol of the nation-state, and in 1936 he brought Luis Alberti's band, renamed Orquesta Presidente Trujillo, from Santiago to the capital city to play big-band arrangements of merengue at high-society balls. All of the country's dance bands were required to perform newly composed merengues praising the dictator, and this national music became a staple of radio broadcasts. Scholars maintained that "Dominican folk music cannot be but a derivative of Spanish music" (Flerida de Nolasco quoted in Davis 1976, 22), and top bandleader Luis Alberti (1975, 71) opined that "merengue has nothing to do with black or African rhythms." These views owe, of course, to the influence of Trujillo's racist ideology, but they also have to do with the fact that the Dominican Republic is home to a plethora of neo-African ritual drumming genres; to many Dominicans, the European melodies, harmonies, and instrumentation of merengue set it apart from Afro-Dominican ritual music.

Other than Alberti, the top exponent of merengue tradicional, as big band merengue later came to be called, was Super Orquesta San Jose, which featured Joseito Mateo (the "King of Merengue") on vocals. Mateo (1985) describes the impression that Alberti's innovative fusion of rustic merengue and polished big band jazz made on young musicians:

   Luis Alberti went straight to high society, because it was an elite band,
   sponsored by Trujillo. Trujillo had them play on the salons, and when we
   first saw them, they looked fine. And also, he was a great musician. This
   was another class of merengue; the musicians played better. That is, they
   respected musical conventions ... such as crescendos, mordents, moderato;
   everything that [classical] music has. They did that, and it sounded
   beautiful.

The jazz influences in the new merengue only furthered its association with cosmopolitan sophistication, augmenting its distance from Afro-Dominican ritual drumming.

Other foreign musics also gained favor. When Brazilian sambas became popular, for example, Dominican bands recorded merengue versions of the foreign hits. Possibly the most aesthetically successful fusion of this sort was created by a young arranger, Felix del Rosario. His merengue version of "Skokiaan," an internationally popular Zimbabwean song,(5) combines elements of South African tsaba-tsaba, big band jazz, and merengue. The arrangement commences with typical merengue tambora and guira rhythms embedded in a characteristic South African I-IV-I-V chord progression instead of the V-I progression typical of merengue. This progression continues throughout the arrangement. Played by an alto saxophone soloist, the melody calls for glissandos similar to those played by New Orleans clarinetists and alto saxophone stylists such as Johnny Hodges. After the melody is stated twice, call and response between the band's brass and reed sections evoke effects similar to those in big band jazz (see Ex. 1), and solo tambora breaks bring to mind big band drum set fills. Outlining off-beat successions of diatonic arpeggios in a rhythm related to the Afro-Cuban (and pan-Caribbean) clave rhythm, the riff, or jaleo (see Ex. 2), is often used in accordion-based merengue. The African, jazz, and merengue elements each remain recognizable in the arrangement, yet their shared black Atlantic aesthetic forms a seamless union. That the original "Skokiaan" was a tsaba-tsaba, which Coplan defines as a "syncretic style of [southern] African urban music blending African melody and rhythm, American swing, and Latin American" music (1985, 270; see also 1985, 154), further underlines the breadth of pan-African musical cross-fertilization that was taking place. Del Rosario's arrangement of "Skokiaan" demonstrates that at the same time that the dictator Trujillo was denying the African sources of merengue, Dominican musicians were alive to their links to the transnational black Atlantic soundscape.

[Examples 1-2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Also coming to prominence in the 1950s was the single most important innovator of Dominican jazz, alto saxophonist Tavito Vasquez. A nephew of the tipico merengue saxophone pioneer Avelino Vasquez, he began to play professionally in 1940 with Santiago's Orquesta los Hermanos Vasquez. As a young man, Tavito Vasquez learned to play soprano saxophone and clarinet as well as alto saxophone, and he performed North American music (fox-trot, boogie-woogie) and classical music in addition to Cuban forms and merengue. In 1947, Vasquez moved to the capital city to work at a radio station owned by the dictator's brother, Jose Arismendy "Petan" Trujillo. There Vasquez played in a big band and led his own tipico merengue quartet called Conjunto Alma Criolla ("The Creole Soul Band"), which consisted of saxophone, accordion, tambora, and guira. Until this time, jazz influences in merengue had been in big-band arrangements. As Vasquez (1985) affirms, his innovation was to inject extended bebop improvisations into the music: "I revolutionized merengue; this thing of [jazz] improvisation in merengue, I was the first one to do it." He adds that this was "in the 1940s, during the same decade that Charlie Parker revolutionized jazz.... The 1940s were the decade of musical revolutions" ("!Sopla Tavito, Sopla!" 1992). Coming from an authentic folk merengue background and endowed with a sophisticated ear for jazz harmonies, Vasquez was in a unique position to take the fusion of Dominican and North American musics to new heights; his solos evince a seamless amalgam of Afro-Latin and bebop sensibilities. In addition to making him an innovator of Dominican music, Vasquez's emotive tone, inventive harmonic sense, and original lines render him a jazz master by any standards. The album Tavito Vasquez y su Merengue-Jazz presents the traditional merengue repertory reharmonized with jazz tinges by Vasquez and performed by a group consisting of alto saxophone, piano, bass, tambora, and guira.(6)

By the 1950s, big band merengue arrangements frequently included improvised solos, often for trumpet backed up by the saxophone section playing jaleos. Pianist and bandleader Rafael Solano (1992, 105) remembers that cool jazz artists such as Chet Baker and Al Cohn were popular among the upper echelon of Dominican musicians in this period. Alto saxophonist Choco de Leon recorded instrumental versions of traditional merengue pieces with extended jazz-influenced solos that still serve as models of merengue-jazz.

After Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, the Dominican Republic opened to outside influences as never before. Bandleader Johnny Ventura and arranger Luis Perez incorporated salsa elements and rock `n' roll performance style into an exuberant, faster merengue that abandoned jazz band instrumentation in favor of a smaller conjunto (combo) format. Massive outmigration ensued in the decades that followed, and by 1990, an estimated 900,000 Dominicans--12 percent of the country's population--were living in New York City alone. Escalating transnational intercourse was reflected in merengue's continued assimilation of outside influences ranging from disco and rap to Haitian and South American sources. Access to the transnational Latin music markets gained new audiences for merengue among non-Dominicans; by the late 1970s, it even usurped salsa's position as the most-requested Latin Caribbean dance. Trumpeter Wilfrido Vargas's band led the way in the "internationalization of merengue," as Dominicans called the music's boom. Composer, arranger, and singer Juan Luis Guerra emerged as the most innovative merengue bandleader in the 1980s and 1990s. After studying jazz at Boston's Berklee College of Music, Guerra became influenced by the vocal quartet Manhattan Transfer and formed his own vocal quartet in 1984. The group's name, 4:40, reflects Guerra's schooled aesthetic: its music is to be sung perfectly tuned to the note a at 440 cycles per second (Tejeda 1993, 114). Guerra's music combines merengue with jazz and funk, and it also includes touches of baladas (Latin-American pop ballads) and, occasionally, sundry other musics such as soukous (Central African popular music) and flamenco:

   Our main influence is, more than anything else, jazz.... Next to this, or
   along with it, is funk, [especially in the] trumpet rhythms, [which are
   combined] with the saxophone jaleos. We have an incredible mix: merengue
   saxophone and funk trumpets. A funk sound like Tower of Power's with an
   extremely Dominican rhythm. (Guerra 1985)

As this statement reveals, jazz is close to Guerra's heart. His first album, Soplando (Blowing), consists of jazz-influenced vocal arrangements in merengue, salsa, and samba rhythm and features saxophone solos ("blowing") by Tavito Vasquez.(7) The innovative quality of this album did not attract the Dominican mass market, and Guerra soon began recording in a spicier, more danceable idiom, but the high quality of his music did not diminish.

Despite growing urbanization and modernization, accordion-based merengue remained vital from the 1970s through the 1990s. While rural groups and those playing for tourists retained the traditional instrumentation, groups in the birthplace of merengue, Santiago de los Caballeros, developed a new form of tipico merengue that added conga drums and electric bass to the lineup of accordion, saxophone, tambora, and guira. These groups became more and more popular during the merengue boom, and today they perform alongside top merengue bands in luxurious nightclubs throughout the Dominican Republic and in the diaspora. Because it is allied with both tradition and modernity, Dominicans sometimes call this music merengue tipico moderno (modern folk merengue).

Tavito Vasquez often sat in with tipico moderno groups, especially those led by accordionists Rafaelito Roman and El Ciego de Nagua ("The Blindman from Nagua," Bartolo Alvarado). His impeccable bebop sensibility, couched in interlocking jaleos with the accordion, resulted in breathtaking performances that, lamentably, were never adequately recorded.(8) Although they lack Vasquez's authentic jazz aesthetic, full-time merengue tipico moderno saxophonists perform inspired solos and evince several jazz-related characteristics, in addition to exuding the wild exuberance typical of accordion-based merengue that prompts Daisanne McLane (1991, 28) to call this music an "avant-garde improvisational fest in Caribbean disguise." The top saxophonists in this idiom are Jose el Calbo (formerly with El Ciego de Nagua's group) and Oscar Pena (formerly with Francisco Ulloa's group).

Pena's solo on Chachi Vasquez's composition "Los Saxofones" is a case in point. The group's singer introduces Pena's solo by saying "iSuena (play) Oscar Pena!" and the solo's first phrase has a vocal quality that seems to mimic the singer's tone of voice. Played at the breakneck speed of ?? = 160, the intensity and momentum of this music privilege rhythm and texture, rather than the static tonic/dominant harmony, as determinants of improvisational choices. After an initial chromatic ascent, Pena plays a descending C-major arpeggio over a D7 accompanying harmony. He continues with a series of scales and diatonic arpeggios similar to those that Tavito Vasquez often employs, but in contrast to Vasquez's precise, studied approach, Pena plays with wild abandon, manipulating the saxophone's timbre to create a texture rather than a melody; staff notation cannot adequately represent the result. The solo ends with a gesture that contrasts the low range of the instrument with an extremely high note (d'"), a major sixth above the "legitimate" range of the saxophone.

This type of playing brings to mind the music of the free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler. Ayler often began his pieces with simple melodies and proceeded to manipulate the instrument's overtones, creating screaming textures instead of melodies. It is unlikely that Pena and Ayler influenced each other directly, but they share an African-derived aesthetic in which the manipulation of vocal and instrumental timbres is central. Milford Graves, a percussionist who often played with Albert Ayler in the 1960s, once said that he and Ayler did not consider their music a "new thing" (as free jazz was called at the time), but rather, an expression that calls upon the roots of African-American culture (Graves 1979).

The importance of the saxophone in tipico merengue may derive from the fact that several of the foremost exponents of Dominican jazz are saxophonists. Following in the tradition of Tavito Vasquez, Felix del Rosario, and Choco de Leon, New York City-based Dominican saxophonists Mario Rivera and Juan Colon emerged as major movers in merengue-jazz in the 1980s and 1990s. A long-time resident of New York, Rivera has worked with many of the city's top Latin and jazz musicians, from salseros such as Tipica '73 to Tito Puente's small Latin jazz ensemble. Although his principal instrument is the tenor saxophone, Rivera also plays the baritone and alto saxophones, flute, alto flute, trumpet, vibraphone, and tambora. Among jazz musicians in New York, he is known for his incessant practicing and the jam sessions he holds in his Manhattan apartment during the wee hours. Rivera formed his own group, the Salsa Refugees, which plays merengue as well as the standard Afro-Cuban rhythms.

A regular member of the Salsa Refugees in the 1980s, percussionist Julito Figueroa made tambora drumming into a solo improviser's art; he continues to develop this idiom today with other groups.(9) In addition to tambora, guira, and Afro-Cuban percussion, the Salsa Refugees use palos drums of the Afro-Dominican religious brotherhoods, instruments that are rarely heard in a jazz context. Rivera's 1994 compact disc entitled El Comandante--The Merengue-Jazz brings bebop saxophonist George Coleman and bassist Walter Booker together with Rivera, Latin-jazz pianist Hilton Ruiz, and a Dominican percussion section in a brand of merengue-jazz that could only emerge in New York City. The CD includes straight-ahead bebop tunes, merengue-jazz, and arrangements that seamlessly alternate between jazz and merengue. In his improvisations, Rivera uses sixteenth notes--which are integral to both bebop and merengue--in a way that is planted equally in both traditions.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many Dominican musicians and culture-watchers lamented Tavito Vasquez's lack of exposure; this master of Dominican music had never received the recognition he deserved. To make matters worse, there were few, if any, jazz musicians of his caliber living in the Dominican Republic, so Vasquez sorely lacked musical collaborators. Aiming to pay homage to this innovator, Rivera brought Vasquez together with first-rate jazz musicians to record a collaborative compact disc in New York City in 1994. Not yet released, this recording consists of jazz arrangements of merengue standards performed by Vasquez, Rivera, and many of the musicians on Rivera's earlier 1994 compact disc. In addition to his assured solos on tenor saxophone, Mario Rivera demonstrates his inventive jazz voice on trumpet and vibraphones. Although it evinces the spontaneity of a live performance--most cuts were done in only one take--the recording also features Rivera's overdubbed jaleos for five saxophones, which evoke the accordion-inspired saxophone sound innovated by Orquesta los Hermanos Vasquez and made famous by the 1950s merengue bands. Combined with the tipico sound of the all-Dominican percussion section, this authentic jazz recording is firmly rooted in traditional merengue.

In the company of musicians who share his musical sophistication, and playing longer solos than on earlier recordings, Vasquez shines here. Digging into his characteristic Charlie Parker-like flights, displaced diatonic triads, and diminished scale patterns, his musical imagination is as relaxed and creative as it was when he played with accordion-based groups, but in place of a static harmony and an accordion-dominated texture, the saxophone is bathed in piano, bass, and percussion timbres and underpinned by shifting, sophisticated harmonies. This recording was made shortly before Vasquez's passing in 1995; most Dominican musicians agree that his death in poverty and obscurity was tragic.

While Mario Rivera has developed his style primarily with New York salsa and jazz groups, saxophonist Juan Colon has worked primarily in pop merengue; he was long a regular saxophonist with Juan Luis Guerra's band. At the time of this writing, Colon is completing an ambitious project conceived in honor of Tavito Vasquez. Colon has transcribed Vasquez's improvisations, harmonized them for four saxophones, and recorded them in arrangements that are peppered with improvised solos.

Pianist and composer Dario Estrella is another Dominican jazz innovator. After performing in the Dominican Republic as a youth, Estrella lived in Puerto Rico and New York City for twenty years, playing with Latin jazz greats such as Mario Bauza and writing arrangements for Tito Puente and others. Today; Estrella lives in the Dominican Republic and composes small group compositions that display an original blend of free jazz, bebop, and funk with merengue and other Dominican forms such as the mangulina and salve (see the Estrella 1992 compact disc).

Dominican medical doctor Federico Chan, a long-time friend and admirer of Tavito Vasquez and Mario Rivera, is a self-styled champion and patron of Dominican jazz. His efforts to promote the music include producing the Rivera/Vasquez collaborative compact disc entirely with his own funds.(10) Chan told me about his motivations:

   Merengue has cultural value. It's the most authentic Dominican thing, just
   as jazz is the most authentic American contribution to the arts. We
   [Dominicans] don't have a painter, poet, or novelist at the level of [the
   Colombian author] Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but we have those merengues.
   (Chan 1997)

Chan's efforts to book the Rivera/Vasquez group in the Dominican Republic's prestigious National Theater were unsuccessful. He believes that the group's focus on merengue is behind the rejection; the National Theater customarily presents symphonies and concertos, not local Afro-Caribbean forms. Noting that performance in this prestigious venue would have meant much to Tavito Vasquez, one Dominican culture-watcher did not hide his bitterness when he told me that "the pseudo-intellectuals in the Dominican Republic still reject merengue."

Pianist Michel Camilo (a.k.a. Michael Camilo) emerged as the single most successful Dominican jazz musician of all time in the 1980s and 1990s. He studied classical music at the Dominican National Conservatory as a youth and performed with the Dominican National Symphony Orchestra at the age of sixteen. Camilo developed a love for jazz at a young age and in 1979 moved to New York City to pursue this interest. He was soon a regular member of Cuban saxophone and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera's band. In addition to being sought after for his virtuosic command of the piano, Camilo gained fame for the originality of his compositions. Although most Latin jazz is based on Cuban rhythms, and while experimenters such as Tavito Vasquez, Mario Rivera, and Dario Estrella fuse merengue with jazz, Camilo's polished, idiosyncratic style fuses generically Latin-sounding rhythms and melodies with jazz and funk in effervescently catchy tunes. D'Rivera used Camilo's "Why Not!" as the title tune for one of his albums, and Manhattan Transfer's subsequent recording of it won a Grammy Award in 1983. Based in New York City, Camilo makes frequent visits to his home country, where his compatriots are justifiably proud of his accomplishments; he was even named Knight of the Heraldic Order of Christopher Columbus by the Dominican government in 1992. In the following year, Camilo was invited to perform Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F with the Dominican National Symphony Orchestra in the prestigious National Theater ("Michel Camilo" n.d.).

Young Dominicans began to challenge traditional Dominican Eurocentrism during the post-Trujillo era. Many city-dwellers continued to associate Afro-Dominican drumming and spirit possession with backward lifestyles that are best left behind, but others, especially artists and intellectuals, embraced the philosophy that "black is beautiful" (del Castillo and Murphy 1987-1988, 62). The question of merengue's origin was central to a debate that developed between conservative Dominicans, who insisted on the Republic's Hispanic identity, and those who promoted the country's African heritage. The tradition-minded faction claimed that merengue had little or no African influence, while progressive thinkers celebrated its African-derived aesthetic. Bandleader Juan Luis Guerra spoke eloquently about merengue's African roots without negating its syncretic nature: "Unequivocally, you can't take merengue out of Africa. No matter how much you may want to, you can't take it out of Africa. Forget it: the rhythms are African, period. Of course there are these influences, which are melodic: the melodies are European, the harmony, just like in jazz" (Guerra 1985).

Many urban youth, whose forebears had left the Dominican countryside and traditional arts behind, joined folk dance groups that performed Afro-Dominican ritual drumming and dance. Young musicians also formed bands that blended Afro-Dominican drumming with nonDominican styles ranging from Brazilian music to rock and jazz. Guitarist/composers Luis Dias and Tony Vicioso and singers Jose Duluc and Xiomara Fortuna spearheaded this musical movement. Vicioso told me that, like most middle-class Latin Americans, his first musical loves were rock and jazz. Listening to McCoy Tyner while driving in the Dominican countryside one day, however, he encountered a band of musicians and dancers performing the processional one-note trumpet and percussion music called gaga. Vicioso immediately made a connection between the recorded African-American music emanating from his stereo and the living Afro-Dominican expression that surrounded his car. After studying jazz in the United States, Vicioso realized that, "there was a Dominican thing for me to get into." Returning to the Dominican Republic, he began to conduct fieldwork on Afro-Dominican drumming and to compose music that combined Dominican drumming with jazz. But as he says, "there's a resistance" to Afro-Dominican drumming in the Republic; "people didn't appreciate this kind of thing; there was more acceptance of jazz" (Vicioso 1994). Since 1991, Vicioso has been performing and conducting educational workshops on Afro-Dominican culture in New York City public schools.

Born in Finland and raised in the United States, I have long been attracted to and fascinated by the correspondences between all African-influenced musics.(11) During one research trip to the Dominican Republic, I was surprised that the same friends who were horrified to hear me speak enthusiastically about vodoun ceremonies were respectful of my experiences performing what they called el jazz clasico (classic jazz). Even though his compositions are unmistakably Afro-Caribbean, Camilo's background in classical music and his success on the international stage make his music consonant with Dominican Europhilism; Camilo is heralded as a national treasure in the republic. Tavito Vasquez, on the other hand, never received the recognition he deserved; his background as a working-class merengue musician is simply not consonant with conventional Dominican notions of high culture. At the same time, merengue's status as a national symbol and its disassociation from Afro-Dominican religious rituals give it more cachet than Afro-Dominican ritual drumming has; in stark contrast to the media hype that surrounds merengue, Afro-Dominican genres such as palos, salve, and gaga, as well as the innovations of artists such as Tony Vicioso, Jose Duluc, and Xiomara Fortuna, have no access to the Dominican music industry. It is ironic that the dominant classes in the Dominican Republic, who often pursue cosmopolitan connections, are so out of tune with transnational pan-Africanism.

Jazz's double signification as a generically North American form on one hand and a specifically black North American form on the other lies behind the contradictions that surround its assimilation in the Dominican Republic. As an expression of African-American culture in the United States, jazz represents an alternative to dominant, mainstream culture to many North Americans. By contrast, jazz represents connections to the hegemonic United States to many Dominican music fans, who see it as a cosmopolitan marker of social status. Dominican musicians, on the other hand, have created aesthetically integrated merengue-jazz hybrids that stand as an affirmation of the shared foundations of African-influenced musics in the United States and the Dominican Republic.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, which funded two research trips to the Dominican Republic in 1990-1991 and 1996.

(1.) The initial sections of this article are based on my previous publications (Austerlitz 1986, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1978). This style of saxophone playing can be heard on the compact disc Merengue (Rounder 1130).

(2.) This group later performed under the names of Orquesta Lira de Yaque, Orquesta Presidente Trujillo, Orquesta Generalisimo Trujillo, and Orquesta Santa Cecilia.

(3.) The orquestas used piano accordions instead of the harmonically limited button accordions of tipico merengue.

(4.) This story is still often recounted today, perhaps because the Dominican Republic continues to be subjected to neocolonial domination by the United States. (The United States occupied the Dominican Republic again in 1965 and continues to exert behind-the-scenes influence on Dominican politics.) The pambiche is still performed today as a musical form, but merengue estilo yanqui dance has fallen into disuse; I have been unable to find any specific information on its choreography.

(5.) See Turino (1997, 12) and Coplan (1985, 49) on the original African versions of "Skokiaan."

(6.) Vasquez can also be heard on the compact disc Merengue (Rounder 1130).

(7.) This album was later released under the name El Original 4:40 (Wea Latina WM 7105-1).

(8.) Cassette recordings made on nightclubs' sound systems do exist.

(9.) Figueroa's playing can be heard on A Bass Clarinet in Santo Domingo and Detroit (X Dot 25).

(10.) Unbeknownst to me, Chan also took it upon himself to make multiple photocopies of my master's thesis (Austerlitz 1986) on the role of the saxophone in merengue. I was gratified to discover that Chan had disseminated the thesis among Dominican musicians and intellectuals.

(11.) I have been involved with Dominican music as both a scholar and a performer and have had the opportunity to perform with several Dominican musicians. My compact disc of original Latin jazz and free-jazz compositions and arrangements (A Bass Clarinet in Santo Domingo and Detroit, X Dot 25) was recorded primarily in the Dominican Republic with local musicians and includes an accordion-based bebop version of Chacti Vasquez's merengue standard entitled "Los saxofones."

DISCOGRAPHY 

Austerlitz, Paul. 1997. A bass clarinet in Santo Domingo and Detroit. X Dot 25.

--, ed. 1997. Merengue: Dominican music and Dominican identity. Rounder 1130. Compact disc.

Camilo, Michel. 1994. One more once. Columbia DIDP 082612.

Colon, Juan, and Manuel Tejada. 1997. Con el alma de Tavito. Aljibe Discos n.n. de Leon, Choco. 1981. San Cristobal/merengues instrumental. Quisqueya. Cassette.

Estrella, Dario. 1992. Merengue jazz and capricornio. Prime Records 3473-2-RL.

Guerra, Juan Luis, and 4:40. [1984] 1990. El original 4:40. Wea Latina WM 7105-1.

Rivera, Mario. 1994. El Comandante--The merengue-jazz. Groovin' High 1011-2.

Vasquez, Tavito. Tavito Vasquez y su Merengue-Jazz. Cassette, held by the author.

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PAUL AUSTERLITZ is assistant professor of music at Brown University. He has conducted fieldwork both on rural and urban musics in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in the Caribbean and on the influence of jazz on the folk music revival in Finland, the country of his birth. His book entitled Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Temple University Press, 1997) looks at music in relationship to national and racial identity in the Dominican Republic. Austerlitz is also active as a jazz bass clarinetist.3