Fellé Vega (Tomás Rafael Vega Eloy) is a Dominican percussionist, composer and bandleader from Santiago de los Caballeros, founder of La Orquesta de las Danzas Mezcladas. A self-defined "imaginary folklorist," he has spent four decades digging Dominican folk rhythm out of the countryside and setting it on concert stages — and he builds instruments of his own, among them the Boombakini, patented under his TOKITI® brand and documented as the first Dominican-origin instrument with an invention patent.

Career

He began professionally with Grupo Flamboyán, alongside Víctor Víctor and Jochy Sánchez, co-founded Santiago's Casa de Arte in the 1980s, and played in Rafelito Mirabal's Sistema Temperado before founding the Orquesta de las Danzas Mezcladas around 2003. Their live album «Retreta para el Alma» (Casa de Teatro, 2005) — ranked among the essential Dominican albums by Acroarte — closes its folk cycle with «Suite folclórica», the group's adaptation of a work by Luis "Terror" Díaz. On 26 April 2006 at Altos de Chavón, the Orquesta opened for Sting, who closed «Fragile» with Fellé on percussion and Juan Luis Guerra on guitar. He also directed Santiago's Los Lunes de Jazz for some six years, takes his "Tocando la Vida" workshops to Cibao schools, and has played the DR Jazz Festival (2004, 2009) and opened the Santo Domingo Jazz Festival (2011).

Legacy

Fellé Vega treats Dominican folklore as living material: rhythms to be studied, rebuilt and danced to, not museum pieces. Between the Orquesta's dance mixtures, an essential live album, and an instrument of his own invention now named in the cultural dictionary, he has made Santiago a capital of the country's folk imagination — with the drums, as always, in his hands.