Juan Francisco Santana Solís, known as Francis Santana and nicknamed El Songo, was a Dominican singer. He worked for more than six decades in merengue, son and bolero, and he was among the first vocalists whose voice reached a national audience through Dominican radio and, later, television.

San Carlos

He was born in 1929 in San Carlos, at the time a municipality of its own and today a barrio of Santo Domingo. He began singing at fourteen with Los Taylor, the trio led by the guitarist and composer Carlos Taylor, appearing on the radio station HIT. Through the forties he performed with Paco Escribano on the station HIZ and in the capital’s fashionable cabarets.

The orchestras

In 1947 he joined the Orquesta Antillana of Antonio Morel. He became an exclusive artist of La Voz Dominicana in 1951 and joined the Orquesta Ciudad Trujillo in 1953, touring the island Caribbean with it. He also sang with the Orquesta Angelita, carried merengue abroad with the orchestra of Napoleón Zayas, and shared the Orquesta Caribe with Joseíto Mateo.

His longest association was with the orchestra of Rafael Solano, where he sang for decades.

Merengue

Límpiate el Bozo, a composition by Morel released in 1951, is regarded as his first recorded merengue. Many followed: El Negro Feliz, El Cayetano Baila, Alevántate, La Maricutana, Caña Brava, Apágame la Vela, Arroyito Cristalino, Compadre Pedro Juan, Baitolina and Bambaraquiti among them.

Massá Massá, which he recorded in 1956, came from Haitian folklore and became one of the pieces most associated with his voice.

Bolero

The bolero occupied him just as long. Confesión de Amor, Magia, Está Bien, Confundidos, En la Oscuridad, Hay Noches and No Juegues con el Amor are among his recordings, and a late album gathered a wide selection of the Dominican bolero repertoire, including Sígueme, A Primera Vista, Paraíso Soñado, Dueña de Mí, Invernal, Tus Cabellos and Arenas del Desierto.

En Son de Felicidad

The album En Son de Felicidad, made with Víctor Víctor and Jorge Taveras, is the record of his that critics return to. In 2013 the Asociación de Cronistas de Arte placed it among the hundred essential albums of Dominican music. He also recorded a long-playing collection with the singer Rafael Colón.

Recognition

BanReservas named him a national musical reserve in 2005, an honour that came with a compilation of his recordings. The culture ministry declared him a national figure of popular art in 2007, marking sixty-three years in music, and the national council for the elderly honoured him in 2012. He performed only occasionally in his last years, appearing on television, and died in Santo Domingo in January 2014, at eighty-four.