Guest Contributor: The Scarcity of Documenting Dominican Music in the Digital Age

CUNY DSI Library volunteer Ethan Srebnick, photo taken by Jessy Pérez

            In 2022, Dr. Paul Austerlitz donated part of his extensive music collection (CDs, VHS, cassettes, among others) to the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library. Dr. Austerlitz is a musician, composer, and ethnomusicologist specializing in Afro-Caribbean music and jazz. Most of his work focuses on blending music from the Dominican Republic with forms of jazz. As an ethnomusicologist, he has written seminal works, including Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (2005, Wesleyan University Press) and Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (1997, Temple University Press). As a volunteer at CUNY DSI Library, I have had the pleasure of going through the donated collection discovering artists such as Xiomara Fortuna, Dario Estrella, Ray Barretto, and Boni Raposo y La 21 División.

            In general, the music of the Dominican Republic is typically associated with bachata and merengue. It was exciting to learn about Dominican jazz and other genres that are less popular in the Dominican Republic. For instance, Darío Estrella showcases a mixture of merengue and jazz on his album Merengue, Jazz & Capricornio; Xiomara Fortuna's debut album De la Loma al Llano contains various styles of music ranging from palo-salve ("Tenemos Que Organizarnos"), congo ("Trabajo y Más Trabajo"), gagá ("Gagá Lola"), bachata ("Mujer Campesina"), and merengue ("Quiero Abrir Una Ventana").

            I truly understood the importance of cataloging the music donated by Dr. Austerlitz when I couldn't find some of the albums on YouTube or streaming services (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.). Two examples include, Boni Raposo y La 21 División's album Iluminando el Tesoro Escondido as well as Yovanny Polanco y su Mambo Swing's album En Vivo. With no digital files available of these albums, the physical copies (cassette, CD, vinyl, etc.) are the only accessible materials we currently have. Mostly everything is digitally available nowadays, so we underestimate how accessible information is. If there is no record of a document being accounted for, it's as if it never existed. When the music is only being accessible physically this means that we must preserve the physical copy for future generations to learn from.

Samples of audio-visual materials donated by Dr. Paul Austerlitz in the summer of 2022.

            Volunteering with CUNY DSI Library has been a pleasure. I've learned more about my culture and helped document music archival materials for the Dominican community and the generations to come.

By Ethan Srebnick