Merengue (dance)

For other uses, see Merengue (disambiguation).

For the Haitian folk music, see Méringue.

Merengue

A couple dances the merengue
Genre	Latin American dance
Time signature	2/4
Country	Dominican Republic
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Merengue ( /məˈrɛŋɡeɪ/)^[1] El camino 1ro de Secundaria

In popular culture

• Merengue was mentioned as a song performed between Babs and Charlie in the song by Steely Dan.

• Merengue was mentioned as a dance that is performed by "Lola" in the Barry Manilow song Copacabana.

• Merengue was featured prominently in the Steve Martin comedy film "My Blue Heaven".

• Merengue dancing was featured in the 2008 Tony award winning musical In the Heights.

Link to Haitian Méringue/ Mereng

According to Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity By Paul Austerlitz, we will probably never know with certainty the true origin of this music, but theories about it express deep-noted feelings about Dominican Identity. One theory links Merengue to the Haitian Mereng. Although they differ in important ways, the Dominican Republic and Haiti share many cultural characteristics. Like Merengue in the Dominican Republic, Mereng (in Haitian Creole; Meringue in French) is a national symbol in Haiti. According to Jean Fouchard, Mereng evolved from the fusion of slaves music such as the Chica and Calenda with ballroom forms related to the French Contredance (1988: 5-9). Mereng’s name, he says, derives from the Mouringue Music of the Bara, a Bantu people of Madagascar (1973:110, 1988: 77-82). That few Malagasies came to the Americas renders this etymology dubious, but it is significant because it foregrounds what Fouchard, and most Haitians, consider the essentially African derived nature of the music and National identity.’ Dominican Merengue, Fouchard suggests, developed directly from Haitian Mereng (1988:66).

Dominicans are often disinclined to admit African and Haitian influences on their culture. As ethnomusicologist Martha Davis points out, many Dominican scholars “have, at the least, ignored African influence in Santo Domingo. At the worst, they have bent over backwards to convince themselves and their readers of the one hundred percent Hispanic content of their culture. This is not an uncommon Latin American reaction to the inferiority complex produced by centuries of Spanish colonial Domination”. According to the Merengue innovator Luis Alberti, for example Merengue “has nothing to do with black or African rhythms,” (1975:71). The Dominican proclivity to deny connections with Africa is related to the anti-Haitian sentiment, and relationships between the national music of Haiti and Dominican Republic have often been ignored of downplayed in the Dominican Merengue scholarship. In several standard Dominican sources that mention Merengue in Puerto Rico and other countries, competent scholars neglect to acknowledge even the existence of Haitian Mereng (del Castillo and Garcia Arevalo 1989: 17; Lizardo 1978a, b; Nolasco 1956:321-41). In fact, for Esteban Pena Morel, one of the few Dominicans to admit a connection between Merengue and Mereng, this link renders Merengue inappropriate as a Dominican symbol; he suggests another genre, the Mangulina, as more representative of National culture (1929, sec. 3:1, 3).

^[2]

References

1. ^ William R Trumble, Angus Stevenson, ed (2002). "merengue". Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 1 (fifth ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1750. ISBN 0198605757. 
2. ^ Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity By Paul Austerlitz

See also

• Méringue
• Latin dance