Two snapshots of Dominican nightlife

One of the things I've decided I really like about the DR is that dancing is really a huge part of the culture here. The two most popular dances are merengue and bachata, with salsa coming in third probably along with reggaeton. Whenever I'm in the car with him to and from work, Juan always makes a big deal of pointing out whenever a merengue or bachata tune comes on the radio, so I've gotten pretty good at distinguishing between the genres. It isn't actually hard at all once you know what to listen for. It's also easier if when you hear the music, you imagine what kind of dancing people would be doing to it. Merengue is always up-tempo with a steady, driving beat, while bachata is a bit slower and sadder and sounds a little like country music. If you picture people style-lessly shaking their asses and humping each other on the dance floor, that's probably reggaeton. And salsa, well, it's the one that doesn't fall into any other category. It's just salsa.

In Cuzco, if I remember correctly, most people could fake their way through a salsa or merengue or bachata, but when it came down to it they much preferred getting their groove on to reggaeton, Madonna or Justin Timberlake. And then there's the hybrid of Peruvian traditional and popular music, chicha, which as far as I can tell from music videos, involves male back-up singers doing simple and repetetive steps in a line while a woman in a woven skirt does some spinny moves in front of them. Other than that, no one is really sure how to dance to it. Here, on the other hand, while it would be an exaggeration to say that EVERYONE knows how to dance, it seems that a pretty large percentage of the population does. While reggaeton is undeniably popular, most people seem to prefer the more formal dances, and recognize them as a part of the cultural heritage.

Lately I've been hanging out and doing some touristy things with Landon, a friend of Tim's who just finished the Peace Corps in St. Lucia and came directly here to visit and take a Spanish class. It turns out that the Spanish class he's taking is in a place called "The Center For German Language and Culture" (unbeknownst to him before arriving here), so a bunch of the people in his class are Germans. So the other night I joined him and a handful of Germans and Americans for a night out on the town. We went to some place I forget the name of, but it was allegedly the oldest bar/ dance floor in the city. The place had a nice feel, and was mostly outdoors except for the wooden dance floor in the center, that was covered but open air. At around 10:00 a live band started playing, and that was when the party really got kicked up a notch. I think "watching people dance" would definitely make it on my Top 20 list of favorite things to do, right behind actually dancing myself. And on this particular night I was absolutely mesmerized. I felt wholly insuperior to everyone on the dance floor, sitting there in my group of rhythmless Americans and Germans.

There was one detail that kind of put a damper on the pure entertainment value of the night, though. One of the first things Landon said to me when we sat down was "Doesn't that girl look much, much younger than that guy she's dancing with?" At first I didn't see what he was referring to. It's not uncommon for relatively young woman to date much older men here, and there were one or two other couples that could have fit that description. Then, all at once, something caught my eye: a white-haired, light-skinned balding man, looking a bit slouched and creaky from arthritis, liberally shaking his bony hips as he danced a merengue number with a "morena" (dark-skinned) girl who looked about 18. My first reaction was to laugh at the awkwardness of the man's movements, but as I continued to observe the couple, I became increasingly disturbed by the fact that the girl's pelvis seemed glued to the old man's leg. They danced a solid merengue without breaking apart even for a moment, and for the remainder of the night they reappeared on the floor for every merengue tune, dancing in the same suggestive and glued-together manner. I couldn't seem to get my mind off it, even afterwards. I kept trying to think up explanations. Maybe it was a nice old grandpa taking his grand-daughter out for a night on the town? No, no, that's just wrong. Maybe she's really in love with him? That was the only other scenario I could think of that didn't involved pedophilia and/or a monetary transaction, so I decided to try to stop pondering it.

At one point in the night when Landon said, "There's that couple again," it took me a minute to realize he wasn't talking about the pedophile couple, but a salsa-dancing couple that could have been professional. They really were fantastic. Actually, they were more like a trio: two lanky, fedora-wearing young guys that kept switching off with the same girl, seamlessly in the middle of a song. That was when it occurred to me that I've been learning the wrong dance for four years. Why oh why did I ever choose swing instead of salsa? Fortunately, learning lindy hop has given me the skill of following a male lead, so that I can half-decently fake my way through most dances, but when it comes to salsa, forget it. All I could do was stare in awe as the couple did turn after turn, trick after trick, without visibly missing a step or losing the groove.

Eventually I got up the guts to dance, first with Landon (the only two gringos on the dance floor--yes!) and later with a Dominican woman, a friend of the guy who works at the German Cultural Center, who had so much bubbly energy I was actually frightened. At one point while I was dancing bachata with her I guess I wasn't living up to her expectations, so she stopped, put her hands on my shoulders/neck as if to strangle me, and shook me in frustration. My last dancing attempt was a bachata with a Dominican guy at the next table, who probably made me look mildly ridiculous since he was a billion times a better dancer than me, but was also a lot easier to follow along with being that he was so skilled. Perhaps the highlight of the night was when a middle-aged German woman got up and attempted a salsa, but apparently not knowing even the basic salsa step and completely and utterly lacking rhythm. For a moment, I felt genuinely sad about the rhythm-less state of my gringo "race".

The very next night Landon and I experienced a completely different music scene. Our friends in Justicia Global made us aware of a reggae concert in the Zona Colonial, which attracted probably every single person in the Santo Domingo rasta community (not an incredibly large one, it seems) along with some ex-pats and Dominican oddballs. The concert took place in a not-so-well-lit but fenced off park. Before the show started, a friendly Dominican couple struck up a conversation with us, telling us we had a "good vibe". Their names, if I understood correctly, were Marcel and Marciel. Marcel, the female component, spoke almost perfect English, which she claimed she had learned purely from watching TV.

We arrived at around 10:00, but the show didn't start until midnight. It was worth the wait, though. There was one Haitian band and one Dominican band, though I have to admit I never figured out which was which. The first band kept saying something about the "Fundacion Negra", and I kept wondering what kind of revolutionary "Black Foundation" he was referring to until I realized that was the name of the band. Enhancing the mood of the show was a portrait of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie that took center stage, and a projector that projected continuous images onto a random building behind the park.

One other thing I've noticed about this country that I have to mention is its relative lack of smoking habits. At a concert like the aforementioned, you'd expect to be practically suffocating in the smell of pot, but I surprisingly didn't even get a whiff of it until an hour or so into the show. The percentage of people smoking cigarettes was also pretty low, all things considered. The first time I went out dancing, with Emily and her friends, I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving home and realizing that my shirt miraculously did not smell like cigarette smoke, but cologne. In the DR it is illegal to smoke in public places, but I wonder if that can even begin to account for the difference I've noticed between here and Peru.

All in all, the concert was well worth the 200-peso entry fee-- and was also a reminder of the complexity of this culture that I sometimes forget, being so used to hearing people talk about how much they would love to go to the United States. Yes, American culture has saturated this place and influenced its people in some not-so-positive ways, but if you pay attention, you are reminded again and again that the culture of this country is just as much African as it is Latino or American. There are many unique and valuable elements to be held onto.