Miriam Cruz — Miriam Aracelis Cruz Ramírez, born in Santo Domingo on 17 August 1968 — is a Dominican merengue singer, bandleader and actress. She was the lead voice of Las Chicas del Can, and since 1992 she has led her own orchestra.

The first all-women merengue orchestra

Las Chicas del Can began as Las Muchachas, a group Belkis Concepción put together in 1976. The broadcaster Yaqui Núñez del Risco gave them the name they became known by, and from the end of 1981 Wilfrido Vargas took the group on and ran it through his company.

It was the first fully female merengue orchestra in the country — not a singer with a band behind her, but women playing the horns, the keyboards and the percussion as well as singing.

In 1984 Belkis Concepción had to step away, and Cruz, until then the second vocalist and still a teenager, took the front. By the end of that year Vargas had made the change permanent.

The eighties

What followed was one of the biggest runs any Dominican group has had. Besos Callejeros, La Media María, Sukaína, Juana la Cubana, Ta’ Pillao and El Negro No Puede came out of that decade, and gold and platinum records came with them.

The touring went further than merengue usually travelled: Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru, then Spain, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Finland, and then Japan.

El Negro No Puede has an afterlife she had nothing to do with. Its hook came from Zangalewa, a Cameroonian marching song, and it reappeared in 2010 as the chorus of Shakira’s Waka Waka — a line that travelled from Cameroon to Santo Domingo to the World Cup.

Her own orchestra

In 1992 most of the group left with her to start something of their own, and she formed Miriam Cruz y Las Chicas. She has led it ever since.

Nada Común had arrived in 1991; Nueva Vida followed in 1993, then Punto y Aparte in 2001, Aquí Estoy in 2006, Siempre Diva in 2013, Me Sacudí in 2015 and Salí de Ti in 2017. La Loba, Tómalo Tú, Agua de Sal, Es Cosa de Él, La Carnada and Esa Loca are among the songs that carried.

Standing alone in the category

The Soberano for best merengue orchestra went to her repeatedly through the 2010s. In 2013 she took it for a second consecutive year, beating Juan Luis Guerra in another category the same night. Esa Loca won merengue of the year in 2014.

By 2016 she had four of them, and that year she was the only woman nominated in the category at all — up against Eddy Herrera, Héctor Acosta “El Torito” and Los Hermanos Rosario.

In 2022, four decades into the work, she released Tú Ganas and played Lincoln Center in New York. She has also worked as an actress.