Instant classics like “Ay Bendito” are the kind of jams that bring both adolescents and octogenarians out to the dancefloor at the quinceñera. Golden features Juan Luis Guerra (“Carmín”), the Dominican superstar who dabbled in several genres but is credited with helping bring bachata to the mainstream, and Julio Iglesias, the Spanish croon-quistador who unwittingly collaborated on Golden’s ode to a man’s best friend… his penis (“El Amigo”). Such is the gravity of Santos’ orbit that when he collaborates with English-speaking artists, they’re the ones doing the assimilating.Įven Spanish-speaking stars are drawn in. On Golden, the two Americans featured strictly play the background Swizz drops some Beatz on “Premio,” Santos’ ballad to his skills of seduction, and while Ne-Yo’s fingerprints are all over the “Golden Intro,” his voice is not. And while the dogshit guest verses that Lil Wayne (“All Aboard”) and Nicki Minaj (“Animales”) contributed to early records may have been throwaways, it’s telling that they were the features, and not the other way around. 1, it’s on a bachata song (“Promise”) when Drake courted him on Nothing Was the Same with his line “Spanish girls love me like I’m Aventura,” the resulting collaboration saw Drake singing-in Spanish!-on Fórmula, Vol. When Santos and Usher go toe-to-toe with dueling falsettos on his solo debut Fórmula, Vol. Santos hasn’t shied away from collaborations with such artists, but there’s a big difference: They come to him. Latin stars have often been used to spice up otherwise staid pop tracks, exploitative relationships that often serve the interests of the English-speaking star more than anything else. But even as Dominican radio and television ignored emerging bachata stars in the homeland, its popularity exploded across Latin America and the barrios across the U.S.: Look no further than the runaway success of Aventura in the early aughts. Los blanquitos, the Dominican Republic’s white upper class, looked down on the music-and the parties where it would be played-a sentiment not improved by the evolution of bachata into dance music, which often strayed from romance to raunch, both on the floor and in the lyrics. The sound is defined by a requinto lead (a smaller acoustic guitar with a higher pitch), and a segunda rhythm guitar, with a rhythm section dominated by the bass guitar and high-pitched drums like bongos or a tambora, and maracas or a guira. Rooted in romance, early bachata evolved from the slower Cuban bolero style, a raw, personal counterpart to the longstanding tradition of merengue orchestras. But for the all the myriad sounds Golden pulls from, its roots are firmly planted in bachata, the sounds of the campo.īachata, an oft-maligned genre born in the Dominican Republic, has long been associated with the country’s poor rural classes. The pan-Latin Spanglish vibes of Santos’ work feels representative of his home borough of the Bronx, where all of these sounds co-exist, where Dominican dembow lives next to Colombian reggaetón, and your tio’s salsa shares space with abuelo’s merengue. Even when he makes a nod to new English-speaking fans (“I’ve been doing this a while/Put in work and traveling miles”) with a hip-pop intro co-written by Ne-Yo, he closes it out with a verse in Spanish. 1 (Versión Amante)”) to hip-hop, doo-wop (“Un Vuelo A LA”), and even Puerto Rican reggaetón (“Bella y Sensual”) and jibaro. His latest album, Golden, is a bachata record that fuses various styles and sounds, from bossa nova (“El Papel, Pt. Though it’s still quite early in his solo career, Santos has shown no signs of crossing over in the traditional sense. Anthony (who himself got his start singing backup on Menudo records) had dabbled in fusing salsa, hip-hop, and house music with Little Louie Vega before fully embracing his salsa roots.īut this is where their paths diverge. The Bronx-born son of Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants first made a name for himself fusing bachata with pop music as the lead singer of Aventura, not unlike Martin’s rise fronting the boy band Menudo. Romeo Santos’ path to becoming arguably the biggest Latin pop star of the moment is not without precedent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |