Dembow

Dembow is the Dominican Republic's dominant urbano genre, built on a single insistent foundation: the dembow rhythm, the 3+3+2 tresillo loop first heard in *Shabba Ranks*'s "Dem Bow" (1990), sped from reggaeton's pace to roughly 110–140 BPM and repeated with minimal variation beneath chant-like, call-and-response vocals in Dominican slang. Where Puerto Rican reggaeton turned melodic in the 2000s, Dominican dembow remained raw, fast and percussive, a barrio party music of Santo Domingo's neighbourhoods. In the 2010s and 2020s, *El Alfa* carried it to international charts, arena stages and collaborations across Latin pop.