Roxy Espinal is a Dominican singer and songwriter from Jarabacoa. She works in bolero, ranchera and ballad rather than in any of the genres her country is known for, and she has had to say so out loud more than once.

Jarabacoa and Mexico

She introduces herself the same way every time: a Dominican singer, straight from Jarabacoa, the city of eternal spring, with strong Mexican influences. The second half is the unusual part. Dominican audiences expect merengue, bachata or urbano from a young singer, and she has said plainly that some people do not realise she is Dominican because of what she chooses to sing.

Her answer has been that Mexican music has always had a place in her, the way it does for a great many Dominicans who grew up with it on the radio without anyone calling it foreign.

The songs

Yo Primero He De Olvidarte, Soy Todo Lo Que Tengo, El Peso De Tu Ausencia and Aprender A Superar are her own. She has described one of them as written for the loves that never happened and hurt anyway, which is a fair statement of what the whole catalogue is about.

She releases singles rather than albums, one at a time, each with a video.

The covers

The other half of the work is other people’s songs, rebuilt. She made a Spanish version of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black — her own translation, not an existing one — and it travelled further than anything else she has posted. She has also sung Camilo Sesto’s Madre and a tribute to Kany García.

When Rubby Pérez and Alex Bueno died she recorded homages to both. The Alex Bueno tribute reached a wide audience quickly, and the merengue repertoire suited her voice more easily than the distance between the two genres would suggest.

Live work

She plays restaurant and plaza dates at home and has taken the act to Punta Cana and to Medellín. It is a working singer’s calendar, built one room at a time.