Félix del Rosario was a Dominican saxophonist, composer and bandleader. He led Félix del Rosario y Sus Magos del Ritmo for more than twenty years, and he changed the way merengue bands were scored: he cut the horn section down to two saxophones and brought Afro-Cuban jazz into a music that had not been written that way before. He died in Santo Domingo on 26 October 2012, at seventy-eight.

The navy band

He was born on 12 July 1934 in San Francisco de Macorís and began studying at fifteen at the municipal music school there. Still young, he moved to the capital — Ciudad Trujillo at the time — and joined the band of the Navy, where he rose to the rank of officer. Jazz took hold of him during those years.

In 1953 he joined the orchestra of Antonio Morel, and afterwards worked with Amado Vásquez, Agustín Mercier and Rafael Solano.

Two saxophones

The standard Dominican dance band of the period carried two saxophones, two trumpets and a trombone. Del Rosario reduced that to two saxophones and nothing else, alternating alto, baritone and tenor and adding flute, which gave his records a lighter and more mobile front line than the orchestras around him.

What he put in the space he had cleared was jazz. His playing draws on bossa nova and on Afro-Cuban jazz, and he wrote for himself as an improvising soloist rather than as a section leader. Carmen, a guaracha crossed with Latin jazz, is the clearest case.

Los Magos del Ritmo

He formed Félix del Rosario y Sus Magos del Ritmo in 1964, and it stayed in the front rank of Dominican popular music for more than two decades. Antonio Peña, Papito Bazán, Quico Marcano and Manuel Perdomo played in it, and Frank Cruz and El Negrito Macabí sang. He later put together the Santo Domingo All Star and the Grupo Félix.

The merengues that stayed in the repertoire are Papá Bocó, written for him by Manuel Sánchez Acosta, along with Víctor y Memelo, Mal Pelao, La Caperucita and El Secuestro.

Christmas

A large part of his catalogue is Christmas music, which is unusual in the size of the commitment: between 1968 and 1994 he released six albums of it — Parrandas Navideñas en Ritmo de Merengue, two volumes of Éxitos Navideños, El Tren de la Navidad, Félix Navidad and Navidad Criolla — all of it Christmas repertoire arranged as merengue.

Distinctions

San Francisco de Macorís named him a meritorious son of the city in 1973. The Dominican government gave him the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella in 1995, and the following year Acroarte presented him with a Casandra Especial for his career.