Magic Triplets

This album is part of a trilogy called Marasa Twa: Vodou-Jazz-Merengue. In the spiritual traditions of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Marasa Twa are magical triplets who manifest divine mysteries. The three offerings, Dr. Merengue, Water Prayers, and The Vodou Horn, present jazz fused with music I have studied as an ethnomusicologist.

I am privileged to have spent my life studying world music cultures. At the same time, I have plunged the depths as a musician and as a seeker of life’s meanings. Wedding my artistic and spiritual paths with scholarly research, these albums are the fruit of my sojourn as a musician-scholar. They focus on my principal instrument, the bass clarinet, and on the music and spirituality of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The trilogy calls upon wisdom generously bestowed upon me by my friends and musical collaborators. I am deeply indebted to, and feel great love for, all those who so warmly welcomed me into their rich worlds of African-based creativity. Considering that these traditions developed as responses to the vicissitudes slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, my involvement in them necessitates prodigious soul-searching. What is my contribution, as a white man, to these music cultures? Unlike conventional research aiming for unbiased reportage, and unlike “world music” projects focused solely on personal expression, my involvement with African-based cultures is motivated by mystical needs, creative needs, and activism. My hope is that these musical offerings will contribute, in some small way, to propagating the transcendent vision that has long fueled the ongoing struggle for social justice from which these traditions emerged.

Dr. Merengue
Paul Austerlitz and the Dominican Ensemble,
featuring José Duluc y Julio Figueroa

I was born Finland and came to New York City at one year of age. After graduating from College, I encountered a booming merengue scene, as Dominican music hit the Big Apple by storm. I learned that the saxophone plays an important role in this music and found work playing in local bands, even gaining opportunities to play with the King of Merengue, Joseíto Mateo. I fell in love with merengue; it seemed like the happiest music I had ever heard! I decided to pursue a doctorate in ethnomusicology and to write my Ph.D. dissertation on the music. Joseíto Mateo and many other merengueros received me warmly in when conducting research, teaching me about the music’s amazing history. I fell in love with the Dominican Republic, adopting it as my second home.

Through the years, I have combined my dedication to ethnomusicological scholarship with a passion for expressing myself artistically. My initial interactions with singer, drummer, and dancer José Duluc and percussionist Julio Figueroa centered around research; they taught me about Dominican music. We also enjoyed each others’ company, and today, Duluc and Julito are two of my best friends in the world. With time, we started collaborating on creative projects. In 2008, I founded a group called the Dominican Ensemble, which features these artists. The other musicians – pianist Gustavo Rodríguez, bassist Esar Simo, and drum set player Otoniel Nicolas – are also major figures in Dominican music, so this is truly an “all-star band.” The late drummer, our dearly missed friend, Wellington Valenzuela, played in the Dominican Ensemble for many years, and he is spiritually present on this album. On four selections, I invited the great Juan Valdez and his brother Freddy Valdez to join us on piano and bass, respectively.

My book, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Temple University Press, 1997), focuses on historical and regional variations of the music, and this album offers my own creative, re-imagined versions of the repertoire discussed in the book. Each piece is dedicated to a great figure in the history of merengue.