Worlds of Music; Dominican roots
- Series
- Worlds of Music
- Episode
- Dominican roots
- Producing Organization
- World Music Institute
- Contributing Organization
- WNYC (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/80-92t4c32t
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/80-92t4c32t).
- Description
- Program Description
- World Music Institute Presents DOMINICAN ROOTS Music Festival Espiritu Dominicano Sixto Miniel Victoriano Fortunato Vargas Roberto Aybar Santo Bienvenido Percel Soto ("Bienvo") Heriberto Prez Luis Jos ("Luis Matn") AsaDif Toni Vicioso Bony Raposo Osvaldo Snchcz Chago Villanueva Guillermo Crdenas David Shields Chris Lightcap Nina Paulino Pedro Sosa Edis Snchez El Cieguito de Nagua Toni Vicioso - coordinator of the event Martha Ellen Davis presenter, program notes, translation, photographs Ray Allen, project coordinator Sunday, May I SYMPHONY SPACE Broadway at 95th St The Dominican Republic is an Hispanic country forming a pan of I atin America despite its location in the Caribbean. It is in fact the modern version of Spain's first colony in the New World; its culture represents more than a five-hundred year continuum since the conquest in 1492 At the same time, the Dominican Republic is an African-American country. Due lo the early demise of the large Native American (Tano) population by disease and warfare, as early as 1502 African slaves were imported into the island as a labor force, largely for sugar cane. Africans were later taken to other areas of the Caribbean, likewise tor sugar cane cultivation. So, despite the European colonial rule and official language, African heritage is the cultural common denominator that unites the Caribbean as a culture area. In the Dominican Republic, African merged with Spanish culture to form the rich hybrid illustrated by the oral musical traditions of today. African and Haitian Roots in Dominican Musical Culture The island of Hispaniola was a single colony, Santo Domingo, for over two hundred years Rut after Spain discovered greater riches in Mexico and Peru. Santo Domingo was left as a backwater. This neglect allowed France to get a foothold In the island In 1(39/, Spain ceded to France the western third of Hispaniola. called "St. Domingue" {the French translation of "Santo Domingo"). Different from Spain, France developed St. Domingue as the jewel in its crown. Development at that time was based on tropical agriculture using an African slave labor force. So tens of thousands of Africans, of various ethnic origins, were brought in from West and Central Africa. In this way, the racial and ethnic composition of St Domingue, and the population density itself, grew to be very different from Santo Domingo, which remained sparsely populated and quite European, racially and culturally, this marked racial and cultural difference between the two countries has remained, despite certain African influence which has remained in the country and which is represented in aspects of tonight's festival. The African slaves of St. Domingue liberated themselves from the French yoke in 1804, forming the second free republic in the Americas (the first being the United States) and adopting for their country the tano native American name of Hati (meaning "mountainous land"). The Dominican independence from Spain in 1865, likewise led to the renaming of Santo Domingo as Dominican Republic. Since then, the population growth in Haiti has exhausted the natural resources and caused a state of chronic poverty to develop. (The Dominican Republic is following the same course, but lies behind Haiti because of its initially low population density.) Consequently, for some time there has been an overflow of Haitians into Dominican territory. This trend feeds the official Dominican fear of being overrun by Haiti, as it indeed was during 1822-44 during the Haitian initiative to liberate the entire island hum European rule. Dominican paranoia is periodically expressed by official purges, the worst being Trujillo's ordered massacre of perhaps 15,000 in 1937. Yet Haitians are highly useful as a labor force, and (or several decades now have been contracted as braceros for the six-month cane-cutting season (la zafra)similar lo the agricultural contracts in the U.S. Southwest and California for Mexican braceros. Many Haitians have stayed and others have come in on foot over the long, poorly policed border. It is estimated that there may be 1,000,000 undocumented Haitians in the Dominican Republic at present. So the Haitian presence in the country is not small, and one aspect of musical influence is the gag' presented in tonight's festival. Tonight's Festival Tonight's festival that celebrates the roots of Dominican music offers examples of African- and Haitian-derived components of Dominican oral musical culture, in addition to the well-known traditional merengue, a cultural hybrid. This event is the premiere in the United States of the traditional performers of the Afro-Dominican congos, sarandunga and Haitian-Dominican gag. Their music is presented by the World Music Institute as testimony of the African and Haitian heritage in Dominican culture. Of course, the traditional performers play their music as tradition, with no other agendato honor the saints and the dead and to provide enjoyment and recreation. But the objective of the presenters and of the New-York based group. AsaDif, is educational; to counterbalance the official Dominican cultural policy which affirms that the country is racially white and culturally Spanish and implies that anything African, Haitian, and black is unauthentic. In response, tonight's program affirms and praises the Afro-Dominican musical heritage and the creativity in Dominican music of the oral tradition The components of the program illustrate both conservation and evolution in Dominican music. On the one hand, the program features the Congos del Espiritu Santo {Congos of the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit) of greater Villa Mella and the Sarandunga of the Brotherhood of St. John the Baptist of Ban and La Vereda, Province of Peravia, two types of tradition-bound sacred drumming associated with Afro-Dominican religious brother hoods. It also features the well-known merengue, a social dance which is the example par excellence of Dominican musical creativity and evolution. In addition, it includes gags', the Haitian-Dominican magic-based carnavalesque society of the Lenten season, introduced into the many Dominican sugar-cane settlements in recent decades by Haitian seasonal cane-workers in the process of "dominicanization" by second- and third-generation Haitian-Dominicans. Finally, the program features the New York based AsaDif, organizers of this festival. On the one hand. AsaDif is a special type of folk-revival group which trains, rehearses, and performs jointly with traditional musicians, as they will do in tonight's program. On the other hand, AsaDit is carrying Afro-Dominican music to a new realm of creativity by developing eclectic creations based on Afro-Dominican folk fusion. - A - The Ensembles Afro-Dominican Drums The Congos del Espritu Santo of Villa Mella and the Sarandunga of Ban represent the epitome of Afro-Dominican traditional musical culture. Both are musical subgroups of the Dominican palos (long-drums) and their performance contexts. The music of palos is slow to change because it forms part of religious ritual of folk Catholicism. The palos are associated with Afro-Dominican religious brotherhoods or confraternities (hermandades, cofradas) and are played in honor of the saint or deceased members of the brotherhood. Brotherhoods were a common feature of black society, of slaves and freemen, throughout Catholic Afro-Latin America during colonial times. These organizations represented Afro-American reinterpretations of the guild-derived cofradas o\ Spain and the Mediterranean. Almost everywhere except in the Dominican Republic they died out long ago; so the music you hear tonight represents living Afro-American history. The Afro-Dominican brotherhood Is represented here by the enormous Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit (Cofrada del Espritu Santo) of the greater Villa Mella area (second in size in the country to that of San Juan de la Maguana), whose instruments are the congos, and the smaller Brotherhoo
- Description
- World Music Institute, Symphony Space, New York City, Sunday, 1994-05-01
- Genres
- Performance
- Rights
- WNYC
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 02:52:44
- Credits
-
-
Engineer: Edward Haber
Engineer: Michael de Mark
Performing Group: Asadife
Performing Group: Cieguito de Naguas
Producer: Center for Traditional Music
Producer: World Music Institute
Producing Organization: World Music Institute
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 67969.1 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: DAT
Generation: Original
Duration: 2 hours
-
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 67969.2 (DAVID 48k FOLDER)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Generation: Dub
Duration: 02:52:44
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Worlds of Music; Dominican roots,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 19, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92t4c32t.
- MLA: “Worlds of Music; Dominican roots.” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 19, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92t4c32t>.
- APA: Worlds of Music; Dominican roots. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-92t4c32t