Rafael Leónidas Solano Sánchez is a Dominican composer, pianist, conductor and writer. He wrote Por Amor, which has gone further into the world than any other Dominican song, and he built the television programmes through which two generations of Dominican singers were first heard.

Puerto Plata

He was born in Puerto Plata in 1931 and was treated as a prodigy by eleven, playing at the theatrical evenings his town put on. He came to the piano by way of the violin, the cello and the harmonium of the parish church, and in 1950 moved to the capital and enrolled at the National Conservatory.

He finished the whole course and then turned away from the concert career it pointed to, joining La Voz Dominicana, the country’s first television channel. He became one of its musical directors, working beside Italian, Cuban, Mexican and Argentine musicians who taught him orchestral arranging in practice. He later went to New York for private lessons with the American composer Hall Overton and study at the New School.

La Hora del Moro

Back in Santo Domingo he became a television producer, and in 1959 put La Hora del Moro on the air. Until then singing on Dominican television meant La Voz Dominicana, the station founded by the dictator’s brother; the new Sunday programme opened a second door.

The voices that came through it include Aníbal de Peña, Fernando Casado, Niní Cáffaro, Horacio Pichardo, Arístides Incháustegui, Julio César Defilló, Luchy Vicioso, José Lacay and Los Olmeños. With Nobel Alfonso he later remade the format as a daily show and renamed it El Show del Mediodía, which is still on the air in Santo Domingo.

He also created the Festival de la Voz, a talent competition that produced Fernando Villalona, Sergio Vargas, Adalgisa Pantaleón, Frank Valdez, Manny Oliva and Fausto Guillén. With Yaqui Núñez del Risco he produced Letra y Música, a nightly programme of music and opinion, and later Solano en Domingo and Solano Invita.

Por Amor

Por Amor won the first Dominican Song Festival sung by Niní Cáffaro. It has since been translated into several languages and recorded by Marco Antonio Muñiz, Tito Rodríguez, Jon Secada, Vikki Carr, the Mariachi Vargas and Plácido Domingo, which makes it the most widely travelled song the country has produced.

The rest of the catalogue runs past a hundred pieces. En la Oscuridad went out in the voice of Fernando Casado and later in those of Muñiz and Tito Rodríguez; En Ruinas was recorded by Felipe Pirela, Quiero Verte by Vicentico Valdés, Yo Soy Tu Enamorado again by Tito Rodríguez. Cada Vez Más, Confundidos, Mi Amor por Ti, Confesión de Amor, Perdidamente Enamorado, El Sonido de Tu Voz and Magia belong to the same body of work.

He set the words of René del Risco Bermúdez for Una Primavera para el Mundo, and the lyrics of Yaqui Núñez del Risco for Pensándolo Bien.

Mangulina and Carnegie Hall

He did not stay inside the bolero. Como Juan, Fandango, Güira y Tambora and Mocanita are folk pieces, and Dominicanita and Pensándolo Bien are bolemengues, all of them recorded in his own voice with his orchestra behind him. He made an album called A Bailar la Mangulina in 1970.

The instrumental records carried him abroad. Amorama, released in 1969, was recorded at Carnegie Hall.

The writing

His column Solanismos ran in Listín Diario from 1975. He published Letra y Música in 1992, which he described in its prologue as autobiographical accounts of a Dominican musician rather than an autobiography, and in 2003 wrote El merengue, música y baile de la República Dominicana with the musicologist Catana Pérez de Cuello. That book won the national book fair prize in 2005. Música y Pensamiento followed in 2016.

The honours

He served as Dominican ambassador and delegate to UNESCO in Paris between 1982 and 1986, and holds the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella. He received the Gran Dorado in 1976 and El Soberano in 2005, the two highest awards in Dominican popular music, and in 2016 the Latin Recording Academy gave him its Musical Excellence Award.