Esme, born Elmer Abreu Suriel, is a Dominican bachata singer, songwriter and record producer. He writes what he sings, produces most of it, and has built an audience that is only partly Dominican.

Constanza to Queens

He is from Constanza, high in the mountains of La Vega — the coldest town in the country, a place of vegetable farms and strawberry fields, and about as far from a bachata scene as the Dominican Republic gets.

He left for Queens at eight. That makes him a New York bachatero, which is now a recognisable kind of artist rather than an exception: the genre has had a second capital in the outer boroughs for thirty years, and the records made there answer to a different audience than the ones made in Santiago.

Perteneces a Nadie

His first single arrived in 2017, and a Dominican newspaper was writing about the video within weeks of it going up. The first album was produced by Pedro Polanco, who works as sP, and something happened during those sessions that is the wrong way round: he bought his first guitar while making the record, and discovered he could write.

Most singers learn the instrument and then find the songs. Doing it in that order tends to produce a writer who thinks in melody and arrangement rather than in chord shapes, which is audible in what came next.

Amantes, in 2018, is the one that travelled. He put it out himself, and only afterwards did the album iluso come through a label. Perteneces a Nadie and Amantes were both re-released on it.

The dance floor circuit

Bachata has an international audience that has nothing to do with Dominican radio: a circuit of dance schools, congresses and festivals running through Italy, Spain, eastern Europe and the American cities with a Latin dance scene. Records get chosen there for what a couple can do to them.

Amantes was picked up by that circuit, and it took him to the Chicago International Salsa Congress with a live band, and later to Malta on a world tour. It is a career shape almost invisible from Santo Domingo and entirely real.

Game Over

The album Game Over, subtitled Bachata’s Most Wanted, arrived with ten more songs — Te Burlaste De Mi, Calor, Tiempo, Te Felicito, Botella, Triste, Tu Y Yo, Dilema, Bachata Pegao and one simply called República Dominicana. Doble Vida, with Karlos Rosé, came out of the same period.

The sequel, Game Over (On The Run), was launched in character: his own page announced that the singer had been declared missing, and the record turned up instead. Bachata does not usually go in for that sort of thing, and the fact that he does is the point — the fugitive framing is the closest a bachatero has come to running an album campaign like a rapper.

Sangre Nueva

Sangre Nueva, subtitled Freshmen Year, is the more interesting project. It is an album built almost entirely out of duets with bachateros nobody had heard of, released through his label with him producing, and the naming — a freshman year, with a sophomore year to follow — says exactly what it is for.

An established singer handing half of each track to a newcomer is a form of patronage the genre has always run on and rarely admits to. He has made it the format. The second volume is already releasing singles.

His own channel has him on a Dominican stage with Prince Royce and Romeo Santos, which is the other kind of endorsement — the one where the two biggest names in modern bachata call you up to sing.