Featuring the Hotel Jaragua on the cover [which seems to have 4K rendering issues but not at lower, more compressed settings], this album is a slight mystery. There are no composer or artist credits of any kind. The record label, Remo [no known relation to the drum head company], seems to have been a NYC-based distributor of Latino music. The actual tracklist seems identical to several other albums of Truijillista Merengues:
www.discogs.com/Unknown-Artis...
www.discogs.com/Unknown-Artis...
www.discogs.com/Unknown-Artis...
Other than one version differentiating the different Salve "San Cristobal" versions, with another bearing the nickname of Trujillo's son as the record label, several use the same image of Trujillo [or a derivative] on the cover. The side designation is different for one, but they seem to have the same tracks as the others. Even other videos of "Najayo" on KZfaq have the same "master tape slowing" effect at the end!
Since Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo had a tight grip on media in the country, it probably wound up as a project he approved, was mastered in Dominican Republic, then exported and reissued.
This doesn't even consider how many of these merengues were recorded by other ensembles - www.discogs.com/Rafael-Martín...
Love or hate Trujillo, this is some hot Caribbean music! The Content ID bot "helped" in identifying a few possible artists, such as Orquesta San Jose, Orquesta Santa Cecilia de Luis Alberti, Vinicio Franco, etc. Alberti played in the San Jose Orchestra earlier on, and the use of the tourist-oriented Hotel Jaragua makes it seem that many of these tracks were produced with members of ensembles featured there - www.discogs.com/The-Super-Orq...
This dates from at least the era of compatible stereo, and one of the pieces commemorates the Trujillo Era from 1930-1952.
Virtually the entire content of the lyrics on the album praises the anti-Marxist, nationalistic Boss of the Nation, and this is partly due to Trujillo's massive infrastructure projects to build the country and his use of merengue as a political tool. When he was a young officer in the Dominican military, he was rebuffed by the old elite [who were viewed as either powerless to keep the country stable, or seeking to benefit from it] who made it a goal to ban the rural, "carnal" merengue from "civilized" cities. In a bid to gain rural support and spur his old rivals, Trujillo made himself inextricable from this genre, flooding broadcast networks with it upon consolidating his power in 1930, effectively making it the national music and dance of the Dominican Republic. Using infrastructure building as a means of employing the lower classes, making their music the nation's music, and using said infrastructure to advantage while building a massive police state and exercising total power, Trujillo was able to cement his influence up until his 1961 assassination. As he proclaimed it "Era Gloriosa de Trujillo", it also was "Era Famosa del Merengue".
So popular were these tunes that a few later reissues were "remastered without vocals so as to not cause political inflammation" [i.e. Antonio Morel Orchestra albums]. In fact, a Trujillo is currently fighting to run in the DR presidential race, having been excluded due to lack of citizenship, possibly caused by his birth outside DR since his family was banned from the country in the 1960s...