Manikkomio is a Dominican group that plays merengue crossed with club house, and it is remembered at least as much for how it looked as for how it sounded. Raúl Acosta, who built Oro Sólido, put it together in 1997 in the Dominican Republic.

The masks

Acosta recruited five physically imposing young singers — Orlando, Luis Rafael, Eric, Tito and Joel — and put every one of them on stage in a hockey mask of the kind worn in the Friday the 13th films.

The name explains the costume. Manikkomio is manicomio, the asylum, spelled to look like something else, and the whole act was built around that one joke: the song titles run to Lokko Enamorado, Se Alokko, El Baile Alrevez. Merengue has had plenty of gimmicks, but a masked merengue band is a genuinely odd thing, and it worked.

The records

The self-titled debut came out in 1998 and produced the club records Piensa en Mí and El Kolmo. Manikkomio Internacional followed in 1999, tighter than the first, and gave them the biggest single they would have in Lokko Enamorado — the album also carried Mi Doncella, Ojitos Chinos, El Juguete and Golpes en el Corazón.

They moved from Sonolux to Plátano before the third record, Manikkomio 2001, subtitled There Baaaack, which produced Ya Tú Sabes and La Jonronera.

The return

Acosta gathered the catalogue in 2010 as Grupo Manikkomio La Historia and put it out through Oro Sólido’s own channel, under the billing Raúl Acosta Presenta. En Carnaval followed in 2017 and the single Así Es in 2024.

The group works out of New Jersey now, with Iván Acosta as musical director, playing the Dominican circuit around Newark and Union City — the parades and street stages where merengue from the eighties and nineties still draws.