René del Risco Bermúdez was a Dominican poet, short-story writer and lyricist. He belongs in a record of Dominican music for a specific reason: composers went to his verses. The words of Una Primavera para el Mundo, one of the country’s canonical songs, are his.

San Pedro de Macorís

He was born in San Pedro de Macorís in 1937, into a family with a literary tradition — his grandfather Federico Bermúdez was the first Dominican social poet. He moved to the capital at the end of the fifties to study law, and by the early sixties had turned to writing full time.

El Puño

He founded the cultural group El Puño alongside Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Miguel Alfonseca and Ramón Francisco, and won the prizes of the La Máscara competition three years running. His poems and stories carried ordinary Dominican speech into literature, and the story Ahora que Vuelvo, Ton became one of the most widely read texts in the country.

He also worked in radio, presenting programmes on two of the capital’s stations, and later in advertising, where he founded his own agency.

Una Primavera para el Mundo

At the start of the seventies he wrote words for a melody by Rafael Solano. The song was first performed by Fernando Casado, who has said that he was the one who gave it its title, writing down the text as Del Risco dictated it. Niní Cáffaro also recorded it, and it was sung at the festival Siete Días con el Pueblo in 1974.

It is a song of address, written in the second person, and it has outlived its moment: it circulated again half a century later, during the pandemic, without anyone having to explain it.

Así Tan Sencillamente

His poem Así Tan Sencillamente was taken into popular song by Sonia Silvestre. Others have followed: a concert series devoted to setting his poems to music has brought several of them to singers of later generations, and the foundation that carries his name keeps circulating them.

The work

His published books are few because he died young: a collection of poems, a book of stories issued after his death, and a novel that stayed unpublished for twenty-five years. He died in Santo Domingo in December 1972, at thirty-five. His work is taught in Dominican schools, and the songs built on it are sung by people who have never read the books.