Mártires de León, born in the city of La Romana on 5 May 1968, is a Dominican guitarist, arranger and producer. He plays first guitar on records other people are famous for, and he is the reason two of bachata’s biggest acts exist.

Early years and formation

He built his first guitar himself, out of a piece of wood strung with fishing nylon. His father saw what he was doing and bought him a real one, and he and his brother started playing patio parties as amateurs. He taught himself out of the Ramírez Ayala method, the beginner’s book everyone in the country learned from.

While he was still a teenager Ramón Torres saw a first guitarist in him and put him on a record. He left for a while to play in a guitar trio working the tourist hotels of the east, which is where the harmonic vocabulary came from, and then brought that back into bachata — the combination is on Lo Que Pasó Pasó, cut with Torres. He also played first guitar behind Ramón Cordero.

The bachatazos

He made his living for a stretch on what were called bachatazos: transcribing the biggest hits of the moment and recording them again with other singers. It sounds like hack work and it was the opposite — it made him the man who could hear a song, take it apart and rebuild it in bachata, on demand, at volume.

The engineer Rafael Montilla, one of the best bachata mixers of the period, handed him production work for the major labels off the back of it.

Junior y George, and Monchy & Alexandra

Two acts came out of those sessions. He found Junior and George singing on a bachatazo, cut Piensa en Mí with them, and it was big enough to make them a group and take them to stages in the United States.

Then he put a man and a woman together on one track for another bachatazo — a vallenato rebuilt in bachata time. The song was La Hoja en Blanco, the pair became Monchy & Alexandra, and he directed the band. It is one of the most successful things bachata has produced, and it started as a studio pairing that he made.

The credits

He produced Alex Bueno’s second bachata album, Corazón Duro, outright. The awards on the work include Billboard, Casandra, Estrella and Lo Nuestro prizes and Grammy nominations; La Novela took a Lo Nuestro for song of the year.

Under his own name he has made less. Suena Guitarra Mía is his album, and Añoranza Bachatera came off it — a guitarist’s record, made after twenty-five years of putting other people on the sleeve.