Raúl Acosta is a Dominican singer, songwriter, arranger, and producer. He founded Oro Sólido and has led it ever since, putting him among the figures who kept merengue moving on dancefloors outside the country at a moment when it was losing them at home.

From Guananico to New Jersey

He was born in Guananico, Puerto Plata, and raised in New Jersey. His parents worked in show business, so the trade was already in the house before he chose it.

He studied at Kennedy’s Music World and stayed on to work as a recording engineer and percussion instructor. The training was unusual for a bandleader: he learned the room and the drums before he learned the front of the stage, and both show in the way the band is put together.

Oro Sólido

He formed Oro Sólido in New York in 1994, with Dominican and Puerto Rican musicians, and it was a New York band from the first bar: the audience was the diaspora, the studio was in the city, and the records were built for a club floor rather than a Santo Domingo radio station.

Ta Caché went out on Plátano Records and hit immediately. Behind it came Y Sigue el Cache. Oro Sólido Internacional, in March 1996, is the one that settled the matter, with La Tanga, El Vacilón, Las Mujeres Quieren Machos, and El Señorito inside it. El Poder de Nueva York, in 1997, carried María Se Fue, La Morena, and Abusadora.

He writes and arranges the material himself — Está Cache carries his name in both boxes — which is what separates a bandleader from a singer at the front.

The President of Merengue

The nickname is his and the catchphrase is "hasta las 15", which is not an hour of the day and is not meant to explain itself. Both are part of the same act: a merengue built on repetition and on an audience that already knows what is coming.

The orchestra has played Madison Square Garden more than five times and toured Honduras, Ecuador, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. It has picked up ACE Awards for revelation orchestra, tropical orchestra, and best local orchestra, a Premio Estrella as New York revelation orchestra, a Premio Alpha, and a Premio Oro in Honduras that came with the keys to the city.

Along the way the group has shared stages with Wilfrido Vargas and Johnny Ventura, with Celia Cruz and Marc Anthony, and once with 50 Cent.

Still working

With more than twenty records behind it, the lineup now runs with Ángel Suriña and Raymond Aponte alongside him, and the touring has not stopped: Live From NY, Electronic Dance Reggae, and Festival en la Calle 8 followed within a few years of each other.

Thirty years is a long time to keep a dance orchestra standing, and longer still to do it from outside the country whose music you are playing.