Bachata Concert Video
Con El Alma Clip
Band Details
Dominican folkloric music is hardly known outside of the Dominican diaspora. Super Uba Y Su Conjunto, composed of the best musicians of the genre, is the first band to introduce this music to the world community. Dominican folkloric music is quite different from its better known cousin, Cuban Son (the precursor to Salsa). It has a more African influence- with guitar lines which evoke Soukous and Highlife. Long, regarded by Dominicans as the music of the streets – associated with crime and prostitution - this music is only now beginning to take its rightful place as one of the island’s cultural treasures.
The instrumentation of the group is as follows :
Lead Vocal - Super Uba (Ubaldo Cabrera)
Lead Guitar - Edilio Paredes
Tambora and Bongó - Abel Jiménez
Güira - Juan Espinal
Rhythm Guitar - Martin Lavale
Bass - Samuel Paredes
The center and 'Soul' of the band, Uba is a master of the traditional Afro-Dominican repertoire – to which he has contributed many of his own compositions. His powerful voice was trained in street jam sessions – where amplification could not be used as a crutch.
Edilio Paredes is a prodigiously creative guitarist and arranger, one of the founding fathers of the bachata style. In a career spanning four decades he has recorded the lead guitar on, in his own words, “many more than a thousand tracks”. There is scarcely space here to list the bachateros he has accompanied, from Ramón Cordero to José Manuel Calderón to Leonardo Paniagua to Victor Estevez. In recent years Edilio has taken up the accordion, and it should surprise no one that he plays this instrument, as well, at the level of a master.
The tambora the principal percussion instrument in merengue, the tambora is a two headed drum which is played on one side with a stick and on the other with the hand. Abel Jiménez hails from Dajabón, on the Haitian frontier, the cradle of modern bachata. A percussionist since he was a child, Abel is one of the most sought-after tamboreros for the difficult “merengue típico” genre.
The metal scraper known as the güira gives merengue percussion its treble end, and has replaced the maracas in bachata and bolero. Juan Espinal has played with virtually every bachata group in New York City in a twenty-five year career as a güirero—at this point he is known to local bachateros simply as “Juan Güira”. As a native of the barrio of Pueblo Nuevo in the city of Santiago, Juan has been surrounded by son, bachata and merengue all his life.
Martin Lavale, known to his friends and fellow musicians as “Mon”, has long had a reputation as one of the most proficient “segundas” in bachata. His resume includes stints with many of the most important names in the genre, including Leonardo Paniagua and Bolívar Peralta.
Samuel Paredes is the second of guitar virtuoso Edilio Paredes’ three sons, and exhibits all of the prodigious musical skills one would expect from the son of a master. Growing up in a house where virtually every bachatero was a guest at one time or another, Samuel mastered diverse musical styles like bachata, merengue, merengue típico, and son, and has a firm understanding of more obscure styles like mangulina.