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  • Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing Gender in Dominican Music by Sydney Hutchinson
  • Angelina Tallaj
SYDNEY HUTCHINSON. Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing Gender in Dominican Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 279 pp. ISBN: 978-0-226-40532-2.

Recent studies of Dominican music and culture have largely focused on racial constructions. Sydney Hutchinson's Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing Gender in Dominican Music is therefore a much-needed addition to the field. Tigers is significant in being the first monograph on Dominican music (mainly merengue típico, as well as other urban subgenres) to highlight the ways that gender is constructed and complicated not only through music but also through the accompanying body language, movements, gestures, and stage personas associated with music performance. The title of this book refers to the tíguere, or "street-corner tiger" (2), a Dominican word used since before the 1960s to describe a type of street-savvy masculinity. Hutchinson describes this figure as known for "his amorous successes … his mastery of the urban environment, and his tricksterish ability to come out on top of any situation, whatever it takes" (2). Tigueraje has come to dominate Dominican popular music as a model of male (and female) behavior that is in contrast to the hombre serio (a serious or reputable man—think Juan Luis Guerra). For Hutchinson, this shift should be understood alongside the country's transforming economic and social landscape (14), marked by urbanization, transnational migration, and neoliberalism, which made it difficult for Dominican men to be "serious." Tigueraje challenges a system that "doesn't always reward those who study, work at traditional jobs, and are generally honest" (37). The book moves chronologically from the 1960s to today. It employs a methodology that combines ethnographic fieldwork, library and archival research, analysis of music and lyrics, and interdisciplinary tools borrowed from the visual arts and literature, as well as movement analysis that correlates "movement and gestures with lyrics, musical sounds, and fans' feedback" (23). The breadth of research and analysis for this book is impressive, and it is clearly the product of many years of study of Dominican music and culture.

Hutchinson begins by historicizing local constructions of gender and by analyzing some of the earlier models of tíguere as well as the female tíguera (an assertive and sensual figure who performs aspects of this masculine role) using two seminal representatives of the merengue típico [End Page 281] world: Tatico Henríquez and Fefita the Great (la grande). These two charismatic performers embody contradictory qualities of rural simplicity and urban savviness, bridging the serious and the tíguere models. In the middle chapters, the author examines the ways Dominican migration transformed tigueraje and music genres. In her analysis of the modern style of merengue típico or merengue con mambo, she addresses the hypermasculinity of the genre as well as the complex and significant semiotics of performers who cross-dress on stage, which appeared on the scene in the early 2000s. Hutchinson does not place this phenomenon in opposition to masculine tigueraje but instead as "play[ing] to the tiguere's sense of daring, exhibitionism, and tricksterism" (151). The last chapter focuses on a single artist, Rita Indiana, who has taken tigueraje in new directions by challenging its heteronormativity through emphasizing her androgynous appearance, bringing queer femininities into the public sphere and pushing listeners "into a more active form of reception and interpretation" (24), a practice Hutchinson calls "listening sideways."

Each chapter offers a framework for theorizing gender as well as a detailed and precise analysis of the ways specific performers communicate and embody tigueraje. Chapter 4 promises to be the Dominican reader's favorite, as it focuses on Fefita the Great, one of the most beloved performers in Dominican history. Particularly interesting is an analysis of Fefita's movements and gestures in performances of her signature song, "La Chiflera." As pointed out by Hutchinson, Fefita's movements enhance her tigueraje as she rolls her fingers over her body and uses small pelvic rolls, offering a visible counternarrative that presents "misogynistic lyrics in an ironic light and empowering herself to sing even the most masculine of t...

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