“Dolorita” (2007) – Puerto Plata * Traditional * Produced by Benjamin de Menil and David Wayne * CD: Mujer de Cabaret * Label: Iaso
If you’re familiar with the story of bachata music in the Dominican Republic, how the dicatator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (assassinated in 1961) played a part in developing an ongoing popular conception of guitar music as being inferior to the accordion sounds of merengue típico, it’s difficult not to approach Puerto Plata’s music away from that context. José Cobles is his real name, having adopted the resort town he was born in as a stage moniker, and his vocals and guitar graced his very first internationally-distributed album, which happened in 2007 when he was 83 years old. (But that’s Dominican guitar wiz Edilio Paredes handling those lead parts.) It took that long for musicians like this to finally gain acceptance? Surely there’s more complexity to his timeline than this, but what if we just zero in on the music, which Puerto Plata actually transports from an era predating the popular emergence of bachata. That’s definitely something to think about as you marvel at its effervescence. [Cobles passed away on January 4, 2020 at the age of 96.]