Last Thursday, I attended an ASEDOM club event. ASEDOM is a club dedicated to the dominican community in Baruch. Its event, called "Kumbacarey" was a celebration of the Dominican culture during communist rule, specifically when Trujillo, the country's last dictator was in power. This kind of afro dominican style of music was banned while he was in rule, as were many other things. I attended this event mostly because I had a burning desire to dance to some hard core spanish music, but when I got there, I experienced a part of my culture (I'm dominican by the way) that I had never been exposed to before. I expected the whole "afro dominican" title to be just a title for the event and once I arrived they would be playing modern spanish, typical dominican music. That was not the case. It was interesting to see the dress, the dance and the instruments being played to create this genre I had never known about. The instrumentalists were mostly drummers, playing congas and bongos to create very african inspired music. The singers vocalized with vowel sounds, and even though I'm a native speaker I didn't have a clue as to what they were saying. The music to me could only resemble "palo" music, played mostly in the Dominican countryside- where most poverty stricken natives live- and heavily associated with "santeria" or "brujeria", known as witchcraft. At one point, the singers got off stage, took over the floor and started dancing. I noticed their movements included many isolations of the back and they utilized their skirts in sync with their movements. This is very african type. They also used their hips a lot in conjunction with their isolations. It was just amazing to me that I didn't know this "afro-dominican" genre even existed. I thought I knew everything there was to know about my country, and I was very wrong. I'm very excited about the prospect that Dominicans at Baruch are well cultured about their native country and are able to surprise those who think they know it all. I guess I'll have to take some afro-dominican dance classes now.