Thanks Tom. Now if I were to suggest a paper/study be done on expats in the DR (that would truly be interesting) might the CUNY scholars reply w/the all to common refrain on this forum, i.e., "That has nothing to do with the DR?" )
Two books from my collection are listed below. I found both quite interesting.
Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity Austerlitz, Paul 1997 Musicology
Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music Pacini Hernandez, Deborah 1995 Musicology
I used to have a book on the History of the Bachata. It was only about 20 years ago that they started playing it on the radio. There is also a lot of discussion of Bachata and Merengue in the movie Santo Domingo Blues: Luis Vargas. Many of the songs have double entendres about food and sex, such as La Maravilla: