Merengue on the move: Making music, place, and community in the típico world

Merengue típico is accordion-based merengue music from the northern Cibao region of the Dominican Republic, generally conceived as the traditional predecessor of mass-mediated popular merengue styles. It is the focus of intense loyalties and concentrated activity by musicians, producers, managers, and particularly the fans known as seguidores or viejetes in a cluster of interlinked sites in New York City and Santiago de los Caballeros, the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic and center of the Cibao. As such, it might be considered to encompass a bi-local, transnational scene whose key features are the music, a microindustry centered on live performance and its recording, and the relationship between musicians and fans.