It happens time and time again: if a style of Latin music starts out rugged, raw, and rural, there is a very good chance that it will eventually be seriously commercialized and become a lot more polished. That has happened with everything from Colombian cumbia to Cuban son (a primary ingredient in what is now called salsa) to Brazilian samba, and Dominican bachata is no exception. The bachata boom of the '90s and 2000s found bachata becoming increasingly commercialized and enjoying as much exposure as salsa, merengue, and cumbia in the tropical market, which is truly ironic when one considers that back in the '60s and '70s, bachata was often dismissed as low-class by the more affluent people in the Dominican Republic. Many bachata converts of the '90s and 2000s have had little, if any, exposure to old-school bachata, and this excellent compilation takes a look at what bachata sounded like before that commercialization occurred. Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata from the Cabaret Era opens with Rafael Encarnación's doo wop-flavored "Muero Contigo" from 1962 and closes with
Juan Bautista's 1990 hit "Asesina," which uses an electric guitar (old-school bachata was totally acoustic) and has one foot in classic bachata and the other in modern bachata. Many of the tracks are from the '60s and '70s, and those who associate bachata with the commercial hits of
Aventura or Monchy & Alexandra will be surprised to hear how much rawer bachata sounded in the hands of old-school bachateros like Felix Quintana, Augusto Santos,
Julio Angel, and the late
Marino Pérez (who sadly, drank himself to death). Bachata Roja is enthusiastically recommended to anyone who wants to hear what bachata sound like before it became so commercialized. ~ Alex Henderson