Rafael Inocencio del Rosario, who performs as Rafa Rosario, is a Dominican merengue singer and bandleader. He is a founding member of Los Hermanos Rosario and has led and directed the orchestra since 1983, which makes him one of the longest-serving bandleaders in Dominican popular music.

Salvaleón de Higüey

He was born on 28 December 1958 in Higüey, in the province of La Altagracia at the eastern end of the country. The group he would spend his life in was made up of seven brothers and made its debut on 1 May 1978, in their own town, playing for the municipal authorities at a Labour Day event.

Taking over the orchestra

For the first five years the pianist, musical director and leader was his brother Pepe Rosario. When Pepe died in 1983 the group stopped playing and the brothers considered giving it up and going home. Rafa Rosario’s leadership dates from that moment, and the Dominican press has described it that way ever since.

He and Toño Rosario carried the orchestra through the years that followed, and within a decade it had become the most widely heard merengue band the country had produced. He has continued to direct it for four decades, through changes of line-up, of label and of generation.

Esclavo de Tu Amor

He sings lead on a substantial part of the group’s catalogue. Esclavo de Tu Amor, from Los Mundialmente Sabrosos in 1993, is his, and so is El Rompecintura, from 1997.

The first of those is worth following back: the song was written by Rafael Encarnación, a bachata singer who had died in 1962, and arranged for the orchestra by Manuel Tejada. What the record does is take a bachata from the fifties and turn it into a merengue thirty years later, which is a fair description of how the group has treated Dominican repertoire generally.