Thanks to Ry Cooder and the Buena Vista Social Club projects, sales of Latin music, especially Cuban, have been skyrocketing. Yet as everyone seems to be a Cuban music authority these days, it’s interesting to note the music of its Caribbean cousin the Dominican Republic has been woefully overlooked. Sung, of course, in Spanish and often surrounded by call-and-response vocals, Dominican music bears strong African influences that renders it celebratory, infectious and downright sexy. While the merengue was previously the best known form of Dominican music, in recent years the low class, double entendre-filled bachata has become the people’s favorite. Hence, the focus here is on the bachata, a sparse acoustic-folk music played on guitars or the tinny-sounding requintos (a small-sized guitar) supported by hypnotic layers of bongos. In this vein, there’s a wide assortment of bachatas by established performers such as Ramón Cordero and Juan Bautista as well as rising stars like Juan Manuel and Chichi Peralta. True to Putumayo’s vision of accurate presentations, there are also merengue and Dominican son selections to round out this intoxicating collection. These Dominicans not only prove they’re adept at making great music, they also know how to party. Amen.