Ramón Antonio Javier Demorizi, known as Monchy Capricho, is a Dominican merengue singer and bandleader. He was one of the teen idols of the late eighties and early nineties, first with a youth band and then at the head of his own orchestra.

Sabana de la Mar

He was born in Santo Domingo in 1969 and was taken to Sabana de la Mar at three months old. That is the town he grew up in and the one he names as his own.

Mermelada

He became known with Mermelada, a youth group assembled as the Dominican answer to the boy bands then filling stadiums across Latin America, Menudo in Puerto Rico and Los Chamos in Venezuela among them. Robot, Angelito and Marielena are the songs from those years that stayed with the audience.

Orquesta Capricho

At the end of the eighties he left the group to form a merengue orchestra of his own, and the move worked. Adolescente, Chiquilla Malcriada, Nuestro Amor, Volvamos a Vivir, Siervo de Amor and Rodando come from that period, which is when his name reached its widest audience.

The orchestra was also a school for younger players. Tulile was hired into it as a saxophonist years before recording under his own name.

Ten years away

He then disappeared from the radio and from the stage for about a decade. He has attributed the absence to his record company, which he says failed to promote the material it had released, and has described the retirement as one he did not choose.

The return

He came back to the country in 2008 after years living in the United States, and in 2010 staged a concert marking twenty-three years of work, with Sergio Vargas among the guests. Mátala followed, and in 2013 he released a merengue reading of a song by the Spanish composer Manuel Alejandro.

He has kept working since. He appears in the big band programmes devoted to the golden years of merengue, alongside Ray Polanco and other singers of his generation.