- How do kompa and Dominican merengue differ?
- Shared root, different branches. Merengue is 2/4, 120–160 BPM, tambora hand-and-stick charging straight, accordion or sax lead, faster and more driven. Kompa is also a 2/4 méringue descendant but 95–115 BPM, horn-and-guitar led, mid-tempo and steady. One charges; the other walks steady. "Horns and guitar lead, 100 BPM, méringue groove" is kompa.
- How do I write kompa's steadiness in a prompt?
- Write "2/4, 95–115 BPM with no tempo shifts, horns and guitar trading in fixed positions, bass walking a méringue line," not a bare "Caribbean dance." Kompa's identity is mid-tempo steadiness with a singing brass line, and the tool's default fast setting runs toward merengue or salsa. Naming the mid-tempo and the horn-guitar trade is what holds it.
- It comes out like salsa or merengue — what now?
- Remove the clave and the tambora: "no clave skeleton, no tambora hand-and-stick, horns and guitar trading rather than unison, mid-tempo with no shifts." Kompa uses neither salsa's clave nor merengue's tambora — its core is the fixed horn-and-guitar trade and mid-tempo steadiness. Cutting those two signature rhythms keeps the tool from drifting to the neighbors.
