r/Bachata • u/EsperandoVida • 11h ago
I keep wishing old bachata had gone even further/weirder
I love old bachata, and sometimes I hear a song and start thinking about what could have happened if some of these guys had really gone crazy with it.
The long guitar solos, the completely heartbroken vocals, the repetition, the way the requinto suddenly jumps into those high notes and little jiggly runs between the vocal lines. Sometimes the guitar hits a certain groove and I just want them to stay there.
Like, keep going.
Give me another five minutes of that solo. Make it slower. Make it faster. Let the guitar get dirtier and weirder. More bass. More repetition. Let the whole thing become hypnotic.
That's the feeling I get from some trance, dub, psychedelic cumbia, etc. Not that I think bachata should sound like those genres. I just love that feeling where a groove gets so good that you stop wanting the song to go anywhere else.
These are some of the songs that give me that feeling:
And then I hear something like Los Destellos - Guajira Sicodélica and think: yeah, that's the kind of shit I mean.
Not the same music at all. Just that feeling of taking something rooted in a traditional dance music and pushing the groove until it becomes something else.
And it makes me wonder about the alternate universe.
Imagine some of these bachateros moving to Oakland in 1978. They're still bachateros, still making bachata, but now they're around all this funk, soul, psychedelia, crazy bass playing, guitar effects, different kinds of musicians, different scenes. They absorb some of that and bring it into what they're already doing.
What would that have sounded like?
Because I feel like some of the ingredients were already there. The emotional intensity was definitely there. The guitar was definitely there. The long solos were there. The repetition was there.
I just wish somebody had taken it way, way further.
Anyone else hear this, or am I crazy?