Tigers of a different stripe: performing gender in Dominican music - 156

'Tigers of a Different Stripe' takes readers inside the unique world of merengue típico, a traditional music of the Dominican Republic.

While in most genres of Caribbean music women usually participate as dancers or vocalists, in merengue típico they are more often instrumentalists and even bandleaders-something nearly unheard of in the macho Caribbean music scene.

Examining this cultural phenomenon, Sydney Hutchinson offers an unexpected and fascinating account of gender in Dominican art and life.

Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and New York among musicians, fans, and patrons of merengue típico - not to mention her own experiences as a female instrumentalist - Hutchinson details a complex nexus of class, race, and artistic tradition that unsettles the typical binary between the masculine and feminine.