Luis Kalaff Pérez was a Dominican composer, guitarist and singer. He wrote close to two thousand songs across merengue, bolero and the country’s folk forms, and he was the first to put the mangulina on the radio.

Pimentel

He was born in Pimentel, in the province of Duarte, in 1916. He was apprenticed as a carpenter at fourteen, and it was the carpentry that gave him his instrument: he found a broken guitar in the street, repaired it himself, and kept playing from then on.

The country forms

His range was wider than the merengue he is filed under. He worked in mangulina and carabiné, two of the older Dominican dance forms, and in the salve, which belongs to Afro-Dominican religious practice, as well as in bolero. Carrying the mangulina onto the radio moved a rural form into the medium that was then deciding what the country listened to.

Los Alegres Dominicanos

He led his own group, Luis Kalaff y sus Alegres Dominicanos, and recorded steadily with it from the late fifties into the eighties: Los Reyes del Merengue, Mi Palito de Oro, El Rey del Merengue, La Hija y la Mamá, Fuego a la Lata and Aquí Hay Un Chivo among many others. In 1979 he made an album of merengues with Joseíto Mateo.

The songs

The larger part of his work reached the public through other singers, and a good deal of it left the country. Celia Cruz recorded Juancito Trucupey with the Sonora Matancera, Carlos Argentino sang La Hija y la Mamá, and the Billo’s Caracas Boys took Apretaíto and Ahí Viene la Nena across Venezuela. Amor Sin Esperanza was recorded by Celio González and by Julio Jaramillo.

At home the list runs through the whole history of the genre. Alberto Beltrán sang Aunque Me Cueste la Vida, which Pedro Infante also recorded; Fernando Villalona had La Tuerca; Joseíto Mateo and Johnny Ventura both cut Cuando Yo Me Muera; and Dioni Fernández y El Equipo recorded La Mina and El Colorao. La Empalizá passed through so many Dominican orchestras that it stopped belonging to any of them.

The honours

President Leonel Fernández conferred the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella on him in 1996, in the grade of knight, and four years later the Senate declared him an artist of merit. He died in Santo Domingo on 2 July 2010.