Serenade

Music from the Dominican Republic

By Sydney Hutchinson

During my fieldwork in the Dominican Republic, ongoing battles against the local "crazy ants" (so called because of their chaotic movement patterns) seemed to take up an inordinate amount of time. I knew that with my graduate-school education I had to be smarter than they were, but in spite of all my precautions, the ants did occasionally win. I was just recovering from a particularly nasty bout of ant-induced itching on the Friday that my friend Chiqui Taveras, amerengue típico accordionist, invited me to join him at a friend's birthday party in the nearby town of Moca. The timing was also good because I'd just got new CV boots put on the Millennium Falcon, as my 1984 Honda Civic had been christened. I therefore volunteered to transport musicians and instruments in exchange for the evening's entertainment.

Merengue típico was, after all, the whole reason I was in Santiago to begin with. I had fallen in love with this fiery, accordion-based Caribbean music while living in Brooklyn, New York—the other hotbed of típico activity. The only sure-fire way to learn to play it myself, it seemed, was to go to its home, the Dominican Republic's northern Cibao region, and study with the master, Rafaelito Román. Soon after starting my apprenticeship in 2004, I'd met Chiqui, a multi-instrumentalist then playing saxophone in Román's group, and had become fast friends with his entire family. Although Chiqui came from the border town of Dajabón, his wife Laura's family lived in Moca. Thus, Laura joined me, Chiqui, and his tambora(double-headed drum) and güira (metal scraper) players for the drive out.