Bertico Sosa — Francisco Alberto Sosa Paredes, born in La Romana on 23 February 1951 and dead on 2 December 2005 — was a Dominican pianist, arranger and composer. He wrote the charts behind a large share of the merengue that Dominicans of a certain age can still sing, and almost none of them know his name, because an arranger’s name is the one that does not go on the sleeve.

Early years and formation

He came out of La Romana and studied at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. The piano was his instrument, and what he was known for was the complexity and the polish of what he wrote for other people to play.

The golden age

He worked with Fernando Villalona, Sergio Vargas, Olga Lara, Wilfrido Vargas, Johnny Ventura and Negrito Truman. That list is not a sample of the merengue of the eighties and nineties; it is most of it.

The Villalona records carry his signature most clearly. Antes de Conocerte, Te Amo Demasiado, Sonámbulo and La Jamaquita are his arrangements. When Angelito Villalona recorded La Chula in 1986 with his brother’s orchestra, Sosa wrote that chart too, and he had already done the same for him in 1983.

What an arranger does

The distinction matters in this music and is rarely explained. A merengue arrives as a melody and a lyric; what turns it into a record is the arrangement — where the horns answer, how the mambo is built, what the piano does underneath, when the whole thing lifts. Two orchestras playing the same song sound like different songs, and the reason is the person who wrote the parts.

Sosa was one of the small group of Dominicans who modernised that sound in the eighties, and he is spoken of alongside Manuel Tejada as one of the people who defined what a merengue orchestra was supposed to sound like on record.

Legacy

He was still being called the most influential musician La Romana has produced two decades after his death, and the claim is usually made larger than that: one of the most influential in the history of merengue, full stop.

A tribute concert brought Olga Lara, Fernando Villalona and Vickiana together to play his arrangements back to him. It is the only kind of monument the trade builds for the people who write the parts.