merengue

Dominican Merengue (Spanish pronunciation: [meˈɾeŋge]) is a type of music and dance originating in present-day Dominican Republic which has become a very popular genre throughout Latin America, and also in several major cities in the United States with Latino communities. Merengue was inscribed on November 30, 2016, in the representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO. Dominican Merengue was developed in the middle of the 19th century, originally played with European stringed instruments (bandurria and guitar). Years later, the stringed instruments were replaced by the accordion, thus conforming, together with the güira and the tambora, the instrumental structure of the typical merengue ensemble. This set, with its three instruments, represents the synthesis of the three cultures that made up the idiosyncrasy of Dominican culture. The European influence is represented by the accordion, the African by the tambora, which is a two-head drum, and the Taíno or indigenous by the güira. The genre was later promoted by Rafael Trujillo, the dictator from 1930 to 1961, who turned it into the national music and dance style of the Dominican Republic. In the United States it was first popularized by New York–based groups and bandleaders like Rafael Petiton Guzman, beginning in the 1930s, and Angel Viloria y su Conjunto Típico Cibaeño in the 1950s.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Merengue music”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

merengue is music genre originating in the Dominican Republic, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 15 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶