The Bittersweet Sound of the Dominican Republic

“Agridulce-Bittersweet,” a new documentary by Frank Pavich, follows the lives of several children in Cabarete, a coastal town in the Dominican Republic. We watch as they grow, struggle and thrive under the extremely watchful eye of Mártires de León, a guitarist for bachata star Romeo Santos. He is a teacher at the “Academia de Bachata”, the only school of its kind, founded by music producer Benjamin De Menil. Headlining at the New York Latino Film Festival later today, it is a carefully wrought labor of cinematic love, an intimate and lingering portrait of a people and a place. It is also the story of mentorship, resilience in adversity, buoyed entirely by the liberating power of music.Bachata is already popular all the world over, with stars like Santos, Prince Royce, and Monchy Y Alexandra. Until now however no one has bothered to point a camera at its humble origins. “Bachata”, a Dominican term for an informal, rural get-together, wended its way from backyard gatherings and up through the rougher neighborhoods of Santo Domingo during the 1960s. It exploded on the international airwaves in the early 1990s. Now snatches of it are heard nearly everywhere. You can immediately pick out its irresistibly snaky rhythm, punctuated by the bright melody of the “requinto,” or lead guitar, and typically carrying a lovesick lyric. It is merengue’s poorer, more ardently romantic, cousin.The students in this film love their music but also face challenges. Cabarete, a seemingly paradisical beach town, sports an extractive tourist economy where income hovers between $2,000-$4000 a year. Under these conditions children are prone to desperate survival measures. Prostitution and sex tourism are rampant. Young men often wind up in dead-end service, vending jobs or in the local violent drug trade.Bachata is a vehicle that allows them to navigate these dangers. We follow Orianny, a surprisingly poised young girl, Frandy a stoic adolescent from Haiti, Yerian, a boy who loves the spotlight, and Edickson, a high-strung, sensitive teen. All of them are brought together through Mártires’s tireless musical mentorship. We watch as he teaches them the tricky intricacies of Bachata guitar, the nuances of enunciation, proper stage bearing and presentation, even the slippery process of songwriting. Mártires, who could quite easily be touring the world as a famous bachatero, finds himself unable to leave his charges. “When I arrived, I thought I would only stay one or two months,” he says, smiling, as he drives home from school, “but my stay keeps getting extended… I guess I’m part of the educational system.”“Life in the barrio is challenging,” Mártires tells me over a Zoom interview. “Kids get drawn into music at first because it is so entrancing. Then the love turns into real discipline, a real way of expressing their feelings through art. It’s an outlet, but also a calling and an apprenticeship, something that keeps them focused and off the street.”Nevertheless, the kids face many obstacles. Frandy, an undocumented immigrant from Haiti must hide his birth heritage from his peers or face violence. Orianny, soon to be a beautiful young woman, must be shielded from the inexorable pull of the local sex trade by her mother. Happy-go-lucky Yerian chafes slightly under the stern tutelage of his father and the demands of showmanship. Edickson struggles with his emotions and longs for a closer relationship with his own dad. All these stories are told through a series of moments — a glance, a forced smile, a pregnant pause, a sudden confession, occasional tears. Picking through songs, singing on stage, or engaging in relaxed camaraderie, these moments are woven together with consummate sensitivity and skill.One striking aspect of “Agridulce” is the way it shows the life of children and teens without social media. In the absence of screens, close interaction and laughter are constant. When they are not playing music, they are talking or playing. They pull provocative questions for each other out of a hat, play word games and riddles, sing karaoke and dance, wander the streets, and sit out thunderstorms while exploring their most pressing questions. These interactions are the raw material for the music itself, which we witness unfolding inexorably in real time. It’s a parallel world absent from electronic distraction where lives seem, for all their material poverty, richer than our own.Director Frank Pavich is already known for his immersive approach. He cut his teeth with his deep incursion into the New York hardcore scene, “N.Y.H.C.”, and his equally deep dive into the greatest Sci Fi movie never made, “Jodorowsky’s Dune”. The quiet meditative tone of this film is a testament to his extreme versatility. This is as leisurely and vérité as “Dune” was fast paced and frenetic.Contradictions abound. Bachata can be raw, especially in its lyrics, in ways that would raise the eyebrows of many parents and music teachers in North America. It speaks frankly of physical passion, the torments of infidelity and the joys of consummated love. Another music educator, José Antoneu Abreu, who opened “El Sistema,” a similar music education program in the slums of Venezuela, focused exclusively on a classical curriculum for this reason. He believed that poor Venezuelan children needed music from elsewhere.Benjamin de Menil thinks it’s much more nuanced. “You can see that there are paradoxes and contradictions throughout the film,” he says over the phone. “That is why we chose the title ‘Bittersweet.’ Dominican culture is very conservative, strait laced, hugely influenced by Evangelical Christianity, yet it also has this music centered on passion. It’s a contradiction, but it’s part of the culture. You can see, for instance, with Yerian, that his father is extremely strict, just as Orianny’s mother is with her daughter. In a way they balance each other out.” It’s a dichotomy reinforced by the school, where rigorous musical training helps the children grow into mentors and role models themselves.“Our first batch of students got to be about 17, 18, which is actually older than the age their parents expect them to be working.” Mr. De Menil tells me. “It’s not uncommon for a 15-year-old to leave school and work. So, we trained them to teach, by basically giving them paid internships. At first, they didn’t like it, but then they learned the excitement of teaching. Eventually some of them went on to be undergraduates in Santo Domingo. These are kids from communities who have never had a family member in higher education.” ‘Agridulce- Bittersweet.’ Via Aurora DominicanaAll in all, the film is a window into an immersive world that explores how music is thoroughly woven into a way of life. As Mártires de Leon says about the Dominican Republic: “This is a country that sings its joy, sings its troubles, sings its sadness and laughs out loud. The children learn this from the time they are very little.”

The Bittersweet Sound of the Dominican Republic

The Bittersweet Sound of the Dominican Republic

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