Elvis Montilla is a Dominican merengue singer of the 1980s who billed himself — and is still remembered — as «La voz más alta del merengue», the highest voice in merengue. From Los Mina, in Santo Domingo Este, he passed through Los Kenton and left his signature on records by Nando Galán y su Orquesta; decades later, he is still appearing in public, now as often in worship as in merengue nostalgia.

Los Kenton and the golden-age circuit

Montilla was a merenguero of the eighties, a former member of Los Kenton, the famous orchestra of brothers Tito and Luis Kenton — one of the defining bands of merengue's golden age. The local history of his Los Mina neighborhood, where he lived on calle Guanábana in the sector Francisco del Rosario Sánchez (Las Frutas), preserves that membership, and Dominican press still introduces him by it. The details of his Kenton years — the exact seasons, his place in the front line — were never documented in era sources that survive online, a common fate for orchestra singers of the period whose names lived on stage rather than on sleeves.

The Nando Galán records

He is identified as a featured singer of Nando Galán y su Orquesta, and the identification is anchored in vinyl: the orchestra's LP «Besitos Y Espinita» (Velvet, 1988) carries on its B side the two songs that define his name — «No te odiaré» and «Luna». The local history dates «No te odiaré» a year earlier, to 1987, likely its recording year; on the album it stands as track B1, with «Luna» beside it. Two further songs are credited to him by the same neighborhood chronicle — «¿Dónde está ese amor?» (1988) and «Me hace temblar» (1989) — though neither has yet been located on a catalogued release, and no sleeve credit naming him as the orchestra's vocalist has been read; the physical back cover of that 1988 LP remains the document that would settle his role in print.

A second calling

Time moved Montilla from the dance floor to the altar without taking him out of public view. By 2018 he was singing Christian worship — on 8 June of that year he sang praises at the 50th graduation ceremony of the Universidad Nacional Evangélica (UNEV). And the merengue world has not forgotten him either: in May 2023 he appeared as a special guest at the «Reencuentro Dorado del Merengue», a Mother's Day gathering of golden-age figures in Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial.

Legacy

Elvis Montilla's legacy is a voice preserved on a handful of records and in the memory of a neighborhood that claims him as its own. «Luna» and «No te odiaré» survive as documents of the uncredited orchestra singer's era — the men who fronted the bands, filled the dance floors, and were billed by a nickname: the highest voice in merengue.