Ramon Cordero

Ramón Cordero (April 26,1940 - January 19, 2017) was a Dominican bachata singer (bachatero). Bachata is a genre of Latin American music that originated in the Dominican Republic in the first half of the 20th century with European, Indigenous and African musical elements. The first recorded compositions of Bachata were done by Jose Manuel Calderon from the Dominican Republic. The predecessors of Bachata are Bolero and Son (and later, from the mid 1980s, Merengue). The original term used to name the genre was amargue ("bitterness", "bitter music", or "blues music"), until the rather ambiguous (and mood-neutral) term bachata became popular. The form of dance, bachata, also developed with the music. The first Dominican bachatas were recorded immediately after the death of Trujillo, whose 30-year dictatorship was accompanied by censorship. José Manuel Calderón is credited as having recorded the first bachata singles: ("Borracho de amor" and "Que será de mi (Condena)") released on 45 rpm in 1961. After Trujillo's death, the floodgates were opened: following Calderon's historic bachata debut came more recordings by the likes of Rodobaldo Duartes, Rafael Encarnacion, Ramoncito Cabrera El Chivo Sin Ley, Corey Perro, Antonio Gómez Sacero, Luis Segura, Louis Loizides, Eladio Romero Santos, Ramón Cordero, and many more. The 1960s saw the birth of the Dominican music industry and of the bachata music which would dominate it. While the bachatas being recorded in the 1960s had a distinctly Dominican flavor, they were regarded at the time as a variant of bolero, as the term bachata, which originally referred to an informal rustic party, had not yet come into use. This term was first applied to the music by those seeking to disparage it. The higher echelons of Dominican society felt that bachata music was an expression of cultural backwardness, and a campaign ensued to brand bachata in this negative light. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.