Content area
Full Text
Bachata: A Social History of Dominican Popular Music. By DEBORAH PACINI HERNANDEZ. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, I995. Photographs. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxiii, 267 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $18.95.
Deborah Pacini Hernandez went to the Dominican Republic planning to study merengue, but she discovered a more intriguing and less known popular music called bachata. Unlike merengue, bachata is guitar-based, related to trio music (but angrier), and has not, until recently, been dance music. For most of its history, bachata has been honkytonk music, like tango or country-and-western (but bawdier), and has gravitated toward their common theme of female faithlessness. It is the musical medium that allows the Santo Domingo poor, in Hernandez's words, "to hear the sound of their own voice." From the...