Ceky Viciny, born Aneurys René Mateo Medina, is a Dominican dembow singer and songwriter. He has been recording since he was a teenager, under three different names, and has been at it long enough that the genre has changed shape twice around him.

The Ghetto

The music was in the house before he chose it: his mother danced and his father was a disc jockey. He started in 2006 with a group called The Ghetto, which puts him in the scene several years before dembow had a name anybody outside the barrio would recognise.

In 2012 he formed a duo, Ceky Bichan y La Tetera. It worked with audiences and then broke up.

Bonitillo

He came back in 2013 on his own, changed Bichan to Viciny, and cut Bonitillo. It was the first thing of his that travelled, and the remix put Paramba on it.

What followed is the ordinary working life of a dembow artist who lasts: El Sonido del 15, El Indio, El Funeral, Muévelo, Cuando Freno, Pa’ los Tigueres, Blam Blam, then Domingo and El Cartón, then Koké, Con Sonido and Pila de Enemigo. Records arrive, work for a season, and are replaced by the next one.

The Casa de Alofoke seasons

Two of his recent records were made inside La Casa de Alofoke, the Dominican reality format that puts artists in a house and films them working. De Show, cut there with La Perversa, was explicitly billed as two generations of dembow meeting; Natural came out of the same house. Puyalo Pantera produced work for him from the same period.

He also cut El Punto with Flow 28, and Cuca with Monchy Cadena.

The King Yamaha

The nickname is on his own channel and it is a small piece of Dominican vernacular doing a lot of work: a Yamaha is a motorbike, the motoconcho is how the barrio moves, and calling yourself its king places you exactly.

Nineteen years into the career he is still releasing, still distributing independently, and still working with people half his professional age. Very few dembow artists manage the second decade.