Bachata in New York City

Bachata in New York City is mostly in dance studios, bars, restaurants, night clubs, theaters, arenas, and stadiums.

Bachata is music and dance from the Dominican Republic.

Urban Bachata is from New York City.

Sensual Bachata is from Spain.

New York City’s bachata festivals include:

• BIG Salsa Festival on Memorial Day Weekend
• New York Salsa Congress on Labor Day Weekend

¿Keloké? Bachateame!

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New York Bachata

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Bachata in New York City is mostly in night clubs and dance studios. Many Dominican restaurants, bars, and colmados (bodegas) play bachata as advertising. It’s one of the ways you can tell who owns the business, and what clientele they serve. 🇩🇴

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Bachata Artists in New York

Aventura with Romeo Santos, the Dominican bachata band that defined urban bachata, is originally from The Bronx. 🇩🇴

Prince Royce, is originally from The Bronx. 🇩🇴

Romeo Santos, the “King of Bachata” is originally from The Bronx. 🇩🇴

Toby Love is originally from The Bronx. 🇩🇴

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Bachata Clubs in New York

These New York City night clubs have regular bachata nights.

Club Cache in Greenwich Village has weekly bachata dances. clubcachenyc.com

Gonzalez y Gonzalez Mexican restaurant in Greenwich Village has occasional bachata dances.

La Boom night club in Woodside, Queens has weekly urban latin dances.

Solas bar in Greenwich Village has weekly bachata nights. solasbar.com

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Bachata Dances in New York

Bachata Thursdays at Solas in Greenwich Village. solasbar.com

Bachateame Mama is Fridays at Club Cache in Greenwich Village. clubcachenyc.com

Brunchata is some Sunday afternoon/evenings at Gonzalez y Gonzalez in Greenwich Village.

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Bachata Festivals in New York

The BIG Salsa Festival has bachata workshops and dances in Midtown, Manhattan over Memorial Day Weekend.

The New York International Salsa Congress has bachata workshops and dances in Times Square over Labor Day Weekend.

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Bachata Dance Lessons in New York

• Baila Society
• Dance Fever Studios
• Lorenz Latin Dance Studio lorenzdancestudio.com
• Nieves Dance Studio
• Piel Canela pielcaneladancers.com
• Sensual Bachata sensualbachatanewyork.com
• Sol Dance Center in Astoria, Queens. soldancecenter.com

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Origins of Bachata

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Bachata is tropical dance music that began as a folk tradition in the Dominican countryside and barrios of the capital, Santo Domingo in the 1960s.

It was originally called “amargue” (bitterness or bitter music). The songs are often melancholy. Love in the Dominican Republic is different from love in New York City, so there is plenty of amargue to go around.

It is basically Cuban bolero / trova (Caribbean troubadour or folk music) played Dominican style with the sound of the Dominican tambora drum from merengue, which is the foundation of traditional Dominican music. Dominicans say bachata has son in it, but it is Dominican son which has merengue influences, and is danced in connection like tango.

The dance of bachata is basically merengue (2/2) in 4/4 time, in the same way that Argentine tango is milonga (2/2) in 4/4 time. It’s the Dominican version of what the Argentines call 2×4, the Europeanization (4/4 time) of the 2/2 time music of Indigenous and African Diaspora traditions in the Americas. It’s even in the dance of the famous Diablo Cojuelos (Limping Devils) of Carnaval Vegano in La Vega, Dominican Republic. You can dance bachata the way they dance in carnival.

New Yorkers developed Urban Bachata and the Bachata Moderna style of dance in the 1980s and 90s. Sensual Bachata, a further blend of many dance forms, developed in Spain in the mid-2000s. In New York, there is an Eastern European bachata subculture. It’s strange to go to a Dominican bachata studio and see all young Eastern Europeans. But how cool is that?

We are not musicologists, but it seems to us that the falsetto singing in bachata comes from its urban form. Traditional bachata in the Dominican Republic is not sung in falsetto.

The bachata dance is in 4/4 time, so it blends easily with rock and most popular music. There is bachata flamenco and bachata tango. In the Caribbean, what looks like the American electric slide country dance, is actually bachata. You see it when groups form themselves on the street to dance during festivals. You wonder why they are dancing electric slide, but it’s bachata.

Bachata Artists in the Dominican Republic

• Hector “El Torito” Acosta (Bonao, 1967) is a Dominican merengue and bachata singer who came up as the lead singer for Los Toros Band. It’s a small town on the highway between Santo Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros, but some reason, there seems to be a lot of good bachata in Bonao.
• IASO Records is a Dominican record label, but they produce great bachata videos on YouTube. @iasoRecords
• José Manuel Calderón (San Pedro de Macorís Province, 1941) was the first artist to record bachata with “Borracho de amor” and “Condena” in 1962.
• Juan Luis Guerra (Santo Domingo, 1957) graduated from Berklee School of Music. Berklee produces an endless stream of very successful jazz musicians, although their music can be a little too clean. Anyway, Guerra cleaned up merengue and popularized it around the world. In the 1990s, he did the same with bachata. Guerra is one of the world’s best-selling Latin music artists.
• Monchy y Alexandra are an unusual male/female bachata duo. Their first hit was “Hoja en Blanco” in 1999.

José Manuel Calderon made some of the first bachata recordings in the 1960s.

Juan Luis Guerra helped clean up bachata’s naughty reputation