José Alberto Justiniano Andújar, known as El Canario, is a Dominican salsa singer, songwriter and bandleader. Active since the early seventies, he has won three Latin Grammy awards and ranks among the few Dominican artists to reach the front rank of a genre identified principally with Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Santo Domingo, San Juan and New York

He was born in Villa Consuelo, a working-class barrio of Santo Domingo, in 1958. The family moved to Puerto Rico when he was seven, and he received his first formal vocal training at a military academy on the island. In the early seventies he moved again, to New York, where he began performing with the orchestras of the city Latin music circuit.

That trajectory placed him inside the two principal centres of salsa rather than outside them. He was raised in San Juan and formed as a professional in New York, and he entered the genre as a working member of its scene.

Típica 73

In October 1977 he became the lead singer of Típica 73, one of the most respected bands in New York Latin music, and the association gave him his first international exposure. He remained with the orchestra until 1983, when he began assembling a band of his own.

The nickname describes his voice, which is high, clean and carrying, with a marked agility in the upper register. His standing among musicians rests above all on his soneo: the improvised lines a sonero delivers over the montuno, invented in performance and required to rhyme, scan and resolve. He is regarded as one of the leading improvisers the genre has produced.

He has recorded and shared stages with Mario Rivera, Celia Cruz, Oscar D’León and Nicky Marrero.

Salsa romántica

His run of albums through the late eighties and nineties made him a headliner across Latin America: Sueño Contigo in 1988, Mis Amores in 1989, Llegó la Hora in 1992 with Discúlpeme Señora, and De Pueblo y Con Clase in 1994.

Dance With Me, released in 1991, is frequently credited with setting the shape of salsa romántica, the slower and more melodic form that would dominate the following decade. The attribution to a single artist is disputed, but the record is widely cited as the point at which the style reached a broad audience.

In 2008 he marked thirty years of professional work with a concert at a theatre in upper Manhattan, with Raulín Rosendo among the guest performers.

The tributes

Much of the later part of his career has been given to tribute repertoire, and it is where his awards are concentrated. Back to the Mambo saluted Machito in 1997. The Latin Grammys came two decades afterward: one in 2013 for a collective salsa recording, one in 2015 for a tribute to Los Compadres, and one in 2018 for A Mí Qué, dedicated to the Cuban classics.

The emphasis on Cuban material follows the history of the genre itself, which took shape in New York out of Cuban forms. His tribute albums return to that source repertoire.

Pata Pata

In 2022 he recorded a version of Miriam Makeba’s Pata Pata with La Insuperable. The Dominican press treated the pairing as an unexpected one, given the distance between his repertoire and hers.

He continues to perform internationally. During 2026 he has appeared in Peru, Panama and Colombia and toured the Dominican Republic, and he marked fifty years as a singer with a commemorative concert.