Bachata Rosa Song deliberate upon

A few months ago, my friend Berto emailed me asking whether the song Bachata Rosa is truly bachata. I said, "Yes, of procedure it is bachata." We got into a dinky turn over emailing each other back and forth. In the end I told him that if it isn't bachata, Juan Luis Guerra wouldn't call it as such.

Recently, I came over an description by David Wayne in his website, Isaso Records, mentioning the same thing Berto and I were debating about. In his newest description he discredited Juan Luis Guerra's Bachata Rosa as Bolero and not Bachata. He called them "slick boleros."

"Guerra used the name "bachata" in the title of his most prosperous album, Bachata rosa, and truly bachata served as an inspiration for the slick boleros he recorded for that and subsequent productions; those songs, however, bear very dinky resemblance to any of the phases of bachata as it has defined itself since Jose Manuel Calderon first recorded in 1962. In fact, in the eyes of devotees of the genre, Juan Luis Guerra is not and has never been a "bachatero." (Isaso Records) I find myself disagreeing in most of these points above. He later mentioned in his article,

"Most of the songs were in bolero time, and while it was a known attempt to imitate bachata it sounded quite separate from the bachata which was being recorded by habitancy like Blas Durán and Luis Vargas during the same time period."

I have been studying the bachata music for a few years and to my knowledge, bachata came from bolero and not the other way around! Although some historian would claim that bachata came from Ballata, a favorite Italian music decades ago. I also disagree with this claim because Ballata, in its musical form, does not look as if the tunes and rhythms of bachata. On the other hand, the poetic side of Ballata can be likened to bachata lyrics in the early days. But I digress...

Bolero music is a ¾ time rhythm in the old days (18th Century). Most of the musicians nowadays play it in 4/4 time. The four beat patterns are accented on 2,3+,4,4+ with the congas. It is leading to notice that member of the son rhythm group performs slow-tempo at about 80-110 bpm. Bolero Cha (ritmico) has composition rhythm played in the transition in the middle of bolero and chachachá. Therefore, it has 4/4 time and is a member of the son rhythm group. If you listen to any bachata music, whether it's slow or fast, it is a 4/4 rhtyhm and most importantly, it does not obey clave (Sorry, Mambo dancers). So of procedure it is 4/4 because it came from Bolero, or what David Wayne calls "a variant of bolero" in his description (History of Bachata).

In all the books and literatures, not to mention listening to old bachata music, bachata is similar to Bolero rhythms. The Bachata Rosa song sounds like bolero, but it is bachata, otherwise Juan Luis Guerra wouldn't call it as such. But shame on him if it wasn't bachata rhythm, I don't think that he would have done so to deceive his listeners.

In an description by David Wayne, History of Bachata, he mentioned that when Calderon recorded bachata," was essentially a type of bolero, ... While still based principally on the bolero rhythm..." Indeed, I find the author contradicting himself here.