Bachata

Bachata is guitar music, and everything distinctive about it comes from how those guitars are played. A lead requinto picks out ornamental runs over a rhythm guitar, a bass, and a percussion pair, and the song is almost always about longing.

From the countryside to the charts

Bachata grew in the Dominican Republic through the middle of the twentieth century, played on guitars at gatherings and in bars and recorded cheaply for a local audience. For decades it was treated dismissively by the country's broadcasters, which is part of why its early recordings sound so direct.

That changed through the 1980s and 1990s. Amplification, electric guitars and a more polished production style moved the music onto national radio, and a later generation of performers working between the Dominican Republic and the United States pushed it into wide international rotation.

The instruments

The requinto is the lead guitar, usually played with a thumbpick and tuned to sit above the rhythm part. Its job is to fill the gaps between vocal lines with short arpeggiated runs, and a bachata record without those fills does not sound like bachata.

Underneath, a segunda guitar keeps the harmonic pulse, an electric bass follows the root movement, a bongo carries the pattern and drives the fills, and a guira, a metal scraper, keeps a continuous sixteenth-note wash across the whole bar.

The count

Bachata is counted in four, but dancers place a hip accent on the fourth beat rather than a step, which is the feature most often used to teach it. On the record, that accent is usually reinforced by the bongo and by a small guitar figure.

Tempo separates the sub-styles more than anything else. Slower recordings sit near the bottom of the band and leave room for the vocal; faster ones push towards merengue territory and let the bongo player switch to a busier pattern for the choruses.