Bachata (Dominican dance); Vitamin R (rum)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

Greetings from New York City. I rushed back to witness Monday's  
storm..."Mama juana" is also "mamajuana," of course. "To/too" was copied and not  typed by 
me.
...
OT: My autistic nephew received a stem cell shot down there. It appears to  
have been worthless. Autism is on the cover of Newsweek and was on the front  
page of Saturday's New York Times.
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VITAMIN R
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I posted that "rum" was "Vitamin A." It's also "Vitamin R," according to  
another tour guide.
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(GOOGLE)
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_Sunworld Holidays - Irish Tour Operator providing holidays online  ..._ 
(http://www.sunworld.ie/destinations/dominican_republic.htm) 
... English is spoken in most  tourist areas. Currency: Dominican Peso. ... 
Drink:
The most  popular drink is 'Vitamin R' - rum to the visitor.  ... 
www.sunworld.ie/destinations/dominican_republic.htm - 28k - _Cached_ 
(http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:bYn2GvH5u4cJ:www.sunworld.ie/destinations/dominic
an_republic.htm+"vitamin+r"+rum+dominican&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8)  - 
_Similar pages_ 
(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&q=related:www.sunworld.ie/destinations/dominican_republic.htm)  
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_One Click From Sanity: January 2004 Archives_ 
(http://www.worldwidesam.net/oneclickfromsanity/archives/2004_01.html) 
... for the delay in my continuing story of the Dominican  Republic. ... 
That's how the tour
guide, Osvaldo, pronounced  Vitamin R, and he was referring to rum. ...  
www.worldwidesam.net/  oneclickfromsanity/archives/2004_01.html - 77k - 
_Cached_ 
(http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:yNb2VoPZbSsJ:www.worldwidesam.net/oneclickfromsanity/archives/2004_01.html+"vitamin+r"+rum+dominican&hl=en&lr=lang_
en&ie=UTF-8)  - _Similar pages_ 
(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&q=related:www.worldwidesam.net/oneclickfromsanity/archives/2004_01.h
tml)  
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BACHATA
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OED has no entry for "bachata" and only one citation. Along with meringue  
and salsa, "bachata" is a national dance in the Dominican Republic. It's gotta  
be in the dictionary.
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(OED)
    2.  fig. Vigorous, powerful; very intense; cf. _OCTANE_ 
(http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/crossref?query_type=fulltext&queryword=bachata&first=1&max_to_sho
w=10&search_spec=fulltext&sort_type=alpha&search_id=zTNu-IrkJQS-9628&control_n
o=00335164&result_place=1&xrefword=octane&ps=n.)  n. 3. 

1944 N.Y.  Times 19 Mar. II. 3/6  High octane ballyhoo..has..smartly reversed 
the usual procedure  of opus first and publicity, advertising and 
exploitation afterward. 1974 _E.  BOWEN_ 
(http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-b3.html#e-bowen)  Henry & Other Heroes iv. 77 Mother and Uncle Harry, whose bodies 
and brains happened to be  huge, paired engines that ran on high-octane 
ambition. 1995 Wire Jan. 57/2 His high-octane  Latino product decants ska, salsa, 
hi-life, mambo and just about anything and  everything else South American into a 
peculiarly Dominican form of merengue  called bachata.
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...
(GOOGLE)
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_Merengue &  Bachata from the Dominican Republic_ 
(http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/)  - [ _Translate this page_ 
(http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/&prev=/search?q=bachata&hl=en&lr=&i
e=UTF-8)  ] 
    Music from and information about the Dominican  Republic, Merengue, 
Bachata and Perico Ripiao, a lot of music  examples and pictures of the country. 
... 
home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/ - 12k - _Cached_ 
(http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:wCArm0E9W3EJ:home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/+bachata&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)  - 
_Similar pages_ 
(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=related:home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/) 
...
_History of bachata_ 
(http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/historias/history_bachata.html)      Music and information from the Dominican  Republic, Merengue, 
Bachata and Perico Ripiao, a lot of examples of  the music and pictures of the 
country. ... 
home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/  historias/history_bachata.html - 15k - _Cached_ 
(http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:EBFlXrAMg5UJ:home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/his
torias/history_bachata.html+bachata&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)  - _Similar pages_ 
(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=related:home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/
historias/history_bachata.html) 

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_http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/historias/history_bachata.html_ (http://hom
e-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/historias/history_bachata.html) 
 
This text was taken from the book "Bachata, A social history of a Dominican  
popular music", published by Temple University Press in 1995, written by 
Deborah  Pacini Hernandez.
Defining Bachata
The music that today is  called bachata emerged from and belongs to a 
long-standin Pan-Latin American  tradition of guitar music, música de guitarra, which 
was typically played  by trios or quartets comprised of one or two guitars 
(or other related stringed  instrument such as the smaller requito), with 
percussion provided by  maracas and/or other instruments such as claves (hardwood 
sticks used for  percussion), bongo drums, or a gourd güiro scraper. Sometimes a 
large thumb bass  called marimba or marimbula was included as well. When 
bachata emerged in the  early 1960s, it was part of an important subcategory of 
guitar music, romantic  guitar music -as distinguished from guitar music 
intended primarily for dancing  such as th Cuban son or guaracha- although in later 
decades, as  musicians began speeding up the rhythm and dancers developed a new 
dance step,  bachata began to be considered dance music as well. The most 
popular and  widespread genre of romantic guitar music in this century, and the 
most  influential for the development of bachata, was the Cuban bolero (not to 
be  confused with the unrelated Spanish bolero). Bachata musicians, however, 
also  drew upon other genres of música de guitarra that accomplished guitarists 
would  be familiar with, including Mexican rancheros and corridos, Cuban  
son, guaracha and guajira, Puerto Rican plena and  jibaro music, and the 
Colombian-Ecuadorian vals campesino and  pasillo- as well as the Dominican merengue, 
which was originally  guitar-based.
Before the development of a Dominican  redording industry and the spread of 
the mass media, guitar-based trios and  quartets were almost indispensable for 
a variety of informal recreational events  such as Sunday afternoon parties 
known as pasadías and spontaneous  gatherings that took place in back yards, 
living rooms, or in the street that  were known as bachatas. Dictionaries of 
Latin American Spanish define the  term bachata as juerga, jolgorio, or parranda, 
all of which  denote fun, merriment, a good time, or a spree, but in the 
Dominican Republic,  in addition to the emotional quality of fun and enjoyment 
suggested by the  dictionary definition, it referred specifically to get-togethers 
that included  music, drink, and food. The musicians who played at bachatas 
were usually local,  friends an neighbors of the host, although sometimes 
reputed musicians from  farther away might be brought in for a special occacion. 
Musicians were normally  recompensed only with food and drink, but a little 
money might be given as well.  Parties were usually held on Saturday night and 
would go on until dawn, at which  time a traditional soup, the sancocho, was 
served to the remaining  guests. Because the music played at htese gatherings was 
so often played on  guitars (although accordio-based ensembles were also 
common), the guitar-based  music recorded in the 1960s and 1970s by musicians of 
rural origins came to be  known as bachata.
The word bachata also had  certain associations, upper-class parties would 
never be called bachatas. In his  book Al amor del bohío (1927), Ramón Emilio 
Jiménez, a distinguished  Dominican "man of leters" and "writer of manners," 
described a bachata in terms  that reflect how such gatherings were associated by 
the elite with low-class  debauchery and dissipation:

The "bachata" is a center of attraction for  all the men, where the social 
classes ao those who attend them are leveled and  where the coarsest and 
libertarian forms of democracy predominate. The most  elegant figures of the barrio 
are there, daring and audacious. The setting of  these dissolute pleasures is a 
small living room impregnated by odors that seem  conjured to challenge 
decency....In an adjoining room a guitarist plucks and  unleashes into the 
contaminated air of the house (a) blazing street-level  couplet, to which a singer 
with a well-established reputation as a "second"  makes a duo, provisioned with a 
pair of spoons which he strikes to accompany the  melody.