Monchy — Ramón Rijo, born in La Romana on 19 September 1977 — is a Dominican bachata singer. He was the male voice of Monchy & Alexandra, the duo that carried bachata out of the country, and he has spent the years since it ended trying to be a soloist in a career that was built entirely on singing with somebody else.

Early years and formation

He found music at home and took it seriously young, studying piano, guitar and singing. He sang in a trío first, then worked the hotels around La Romana and the resort coast — the circuit where a Dominican singer learns repertoire, volume and how to hold a room that did not come to hear him.

It was in that period that he met the arranger and producer Mártires de León, also from La Romana. That meeting is the hinge of his career.

His voice reached the public through the Bachatazos compilations, and it was on the strength of those that De León and the executive producer Víctor Reyes decided to build a duo around him.

A vallenato called Hoja en Blanco

The song that made him is Colombian and it was not a bachata. Una Hoja en Blanco was written by Wilfran Castillo in 1997 and recorded by Omar Geles with Los Diablitos, as vallenato. De León picked it to launch the new pairing and rebuilt it in bachata.

Rijo recorded his vocal while the search for a female voice was still going on, so the record that changed Dominican music was half-finished by a man who had not yet met the woman on the other half of it. Alexandra won the audition afterwards.

It took slowly and then it took everywhere — first the United States and Puerto Rico, then far past both.

Ten years

Between 1998 and 2008 the duo made three studio albums, a live record, two compilations and a run of songs that are still the first bachatas many people outside the country can name: Dos Locos, Perdidos, No Es Una Novela, Te Quiero Igual Que Ayer, Hasta el Fin. Hasta el Fin was nominated for the Latin Grammy for best tropical album.

It ended on 15 September 2008, and he learned it on tour in Milan. By his account the decision was not his and he was informed rather than consulted.

The clause

The separation had a legal shape as well as a personal one. He has said plainly that he was contractually barred from singing with her: she was signed as an exclusive artist elsewhere.

The exception came in 2019, when Romeo Santos brought both of them back for Años Luz on Utopía. Neither treated it as a reopening.

Nathalia and Primogénito

He tried the format again with Monchy & Nathalia between 2011 and 2013, and that project drew a Latin Grammy nomination of its own.

Then in September 2020 he released Primogénito, his first record alone — a romantic album whose title means firstborn, chosen for exactly that reason. He described the situation without dressing it up: his career had always been built on duets, and this was a challenge. It is an unusual thing to have to learn twenty years in, and he is the rare Dominican singer who had to.