Merengue Meets the Symphony Orchestra: Interrogating “Music as One” and the “Terrific” Musical Experience at the Hollywood Bowl

On the evening of Tuesday, August 14, 2012, the Los Angeles Philharmonic inaugurated the second installment of the festival Americas & Americans, at its summer home, the Hollywood Bowl. The program would feature Latin American symphonic classics and the musical encounter of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (hereafter, the LA Phil) with the Dominican artist Juan Luis Guerra and his band, 4.40 (Cuatro Cuarenta). Throngs descended into the famous outdoor amphitheater hours before the concert, congregating in the restaurants and stores that abound in the Bowl’s courtyards. The excitement was audible in the cheerful bilingual chatter that emanated from a crowd seemingly as diverse as the population of Los Angeles. A few minutes after 8:00 p.m., the LA Phil opened the evening with the national anthem of the United States, followed by Mexican composer José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango. After the long applause, Gustavo Dudamel addressed the audience, (which included this author):

Good evening everybody. ¡Buenas noches! [Audience screams.] Welcome to this wonderful evening; as opening night of this beautiful idea to unite our America, to say that it’s only one. [Enthusiastic applause.] Welcome to this festival America and Americans. Thinking back when we started this festival, to combine, you know, all of our classical composers, like Copland, Ginastera, Estévez, Villa-lobos, Ives, well, all of our composers. For this second edition we want also to give the message of music as one, not only classical separate, in this case, to the bachata or the merengue, you know?

[Audience screams.]¹

The program was posted online long in advance, and the Bowl crowd knew that the thirty-minute symphonic first half was the opening act. The LA Phil performed Márquez’ Danzón No. 2, after which Dudamel himself tantalized the crowd:

We have somebody tonight, as a soloist. … [Audience cheers.] ¿Hay alguien por ahí de una isla del Caribe, que viene, lo conocen? [Audience screams “Yes”!] Bueno vamos a esperar un poquitito que nos quedan como unas cuatro piezas todavía. [Audience and orchestra musicians laugh.] Let’s wait a few minutes because we have some more pieces to play.

[Dudamel chuckles.]²

An arrangement of Piazzolla’s La muerte del ángel was followed by the prelude of Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4, and Abreu’s Tico-Tico no fubá closed the symphony’s solo fare. At the core of the concert, Juan Luis Guerra offered a lineup of his merengue and bachata hits, all of which have inhabited Latin American and Latino soundscapes since the 1980s. After “La travesía,” the LA Phil joined him and 4.40 in “Ojalá que llueva café,” “Bachata rosa,” and “Si tu no bailas conmigo.” But the evening peaked with “El farolito” (The little lantern), a particular merengue variety (perico ripiao) known for its fast tempo. It showcased the virtuosic exploits of Juan De La Cruz at the Dominican tambora and the vertiginous interjections of the LA Phil uttering merengue riffs, bringing an audience of over 10,000 people to their feet. After three additional numbers and numerous mutual expressions of admiration among the musicians, Guerra left the stage, basked in a minute and a half of screams, and returned for two encores.

These snapshots of the event only partially convey the atmosphere that surrounded Gustavo Dudamel’s first major design at the Hollywood Bowl. “Americas & Americans” was first deployed in 2010 (Dudamel’s first full year with the LA Phil) as a marketing umbrella for concerts at the Walt Disney Hall and featured a broad array of performers from the entire continent. Among other acts, these included works by Chávez, Bernstein, and Copland, contemporary stylistic excursions of Paul Metheny, Peter Lieberson, and Osvaldo Golijov, and the US debut of Venezuelan Antonio Estévez’ 1954 Cantata Criolla.³ Americas & Americans 2012, on the other hand, was a compressed, one-week festival, boldly marketed as a barrier-crushing event. In addition to the Guerra/LA Phil encounter, salsa legends Eddie Palmieri and Rubén Blades performed on Wednesday...