“Hominaje a Ñico Lora”

While it is best-known as a Dominican music, merengue emerged as a pan-Caribbean genre in the middle of the nineteenth century. Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Haiti each developed local forms. The Caribbean merengues were fusions of the European contredanse with local, African-derived, elements; they are thus aptly called Afro-Caribbean contredanse transformations. During the 1850s, Dominican merengue was played on string instruments combined with a double-headed drum called the tambora and a scraper called the güira. In 1870s, accordions displaced the string instruments, and in the late nineteenth century, Ñico Lora emerged a major innovator of merengue in the Cibao region of the country. Soon, saxophones were added to complement the ensemble. The early saxophonists playing with Ñico Lora, such as Pedro “Cacu” Lora, improvised elaborate lines. Tín Pichardo, a Cibao native who danced at many merengue fiestas in the early twentieth century told me that saxophonists “used to embellish and play lots of scales and beautiful things: very beautiful. Their accompaniment went up, and down...it went out of the merengue yet stayed within the rhythm.” The similarity of this saxophone style to jazz improvisation begs the question of possible jazz influence on early merengue, but evidence suggests that merengue saxophonists were probably improvising widely prior to the period of U. S. influence in the Dominican Republic. The aesthetic link between early merengue and jazz, then, may result as much from shared musical ingredients rather than from North American influences: both merengue and jazz were spawned by the union of African and European sensibilities. The Dominican folklorist Estéban Peña-Morell turned the question of possible jazz influence on early merengue on its head by facetiously asking, “Did jazz originate in Santo Domingo?” Re-imagining Ñico Lora’s “Llorar por amor” (and combining it with his “Hatillo Palma”), this homage adapts Pedro “Cacu” Lora’s saxophone lines from an early Ñico Lora recording to the bass clarinet. The result seems modern, but is actually it resembles something quite old. Maybe time doesn’t flow in a linear fashion after all! Also, note how Duluc, Julito, and the Valdez brothers really shine here!