The Second Parang genre we will learn is Merengue. The Merengue is basically the same as Aguinaldo but it is written as 5/8 strum. That means there is no last strum. This rhythm is used mostly for Christmas carols and it is a little bit faster than Aguinaldo.
The Merengue Rhythm is used in songs like Soca Santa or Alegría Alegría.
The measure of a Merengue is composed of 5 strums where all 5 are played with the cuatro. The Merengue will be as shown in the following diagram:
Rhythm of Merengue
As you can see, we will be playing 5 strums where our right hand will do:
- Frenado down
- Strum up
- Strum down
- Frenado up
- Strum down
Don’t worry if you are not able to do a frenado up, you could still do a strum up instead and the rhythm would maintain its form.
Here’s an example of Merengue applied to a song. The cuatro player is Dominc Thompson:
Now let’s play this nice song together:
Here is a Soca song called “Soca Santa” using Merengue as the main rhythm:
