The dances are often interrupted by the serving
of sweets and ices.
In the country the dance music is quite different. A rhythmic beating
is kept up on a drum made of a barrel or hollow log and rude fiddles
or guitars or an accordion play an accompaniment. To the traveler,
riding along his road at night, the deep regular rumbling of the drums
of distant "bailes" comes with indescribable weirdness. In some dances
the participants engage in a monotonous chant, in others there are
pauses in which the young men must quickly improvise verses on some
subject suggested by one of the lassies. In the cities the dances
begin at ten o'clock at night and last until the wee hours of morning,
but in the country they begin at almost any time and occasionally last
two or three days--especially during the Christmas holidays.
These country dances with drum accompaniment are similar to those
popular among the negroes in Porto Rico and are probably an African
legacy. But, like Porto Rico, the Dominican Republic is absolutely
free from the practise of those barbarous negro rites, of which dances
like these often form part, and which are known in Haiti under the
name of "voudou," in Cuba under that of "witchcraft" and in the
British West Indies under that of "obeah," and which sometimes lead
even to human sacrifices.
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