Nancy Amancio — María Saray Amancio, born 1973 in Bajos de Haina — is a Dominican worship singer, songwriter and pastor. She has more than three decades in Christian music and has been a pastor for fifteen years, and her catalogue runs from the mid-1990s to the present without a long gap in it.

Haina

She is from the industrial port town west of the capital, and the daughter of Bárbara Cayetano. She began singing in her local church, where the congregation and its leaders noticed the voice before anyone outside did — the ordinary route into Dominican worship music, and one that Haina has now produced several times over.

The albums

• Me Voy Contigo, the first,

• Mis Sueños, Amándome Así, A Quién Iré and Un Toque de Fe, across roughly 1995 to 2005,

• Arrebato (2006),

• Impactando Las Naciones (2007),

• Estableciendo el Reino (2009),

• Otro Nivel de Guerra (2012),

• Me Paro en la Brecha (2016),

• and Rompe el Cielo (2022).

Arrebato is the record she is known for. Its title song became a standard in Spanish-speaking congregations — sung by other people, in other countries, which is a different kind of success from selling a record — and it is what took her out of the Dominican Republic. She has since performed in more than thirty-five countries.

The writing

She writes, and she is also written for: Este es el Tiempo came from Jairo Frías. Her arrangements draw on pop ballad, flamenco, ranchera and bolero rather than staying inside a single worship idiom. She appears alongside Isabelle Valdez, Rosa Karina and a dozen others on the collective recording Yo Soy Quisqueya.

Recognition

She won a Premio Casandra in the Dominican Republic in 2008, a Premio Paoli in Puerto Rico in 2010 and a Premio de la Juventud at home the same year, and was nominated for a Premio Unción in Costa Rica.