Sandy Reyes is a Dominican merengue singer, born Salvador Reyes Pichardo in Concepción de La Vega on 9 November 1955. He was the lead voice of Wilfrido Vargas y sus Beduinos in the years when that orchestra was carrying merengue out of the country, and the voice on Abusadora, Merecumbé and El Pájaro Chowi.

A piano bar and a wrong ambition

He started in the piano bar of the Hotel El Comodoro, in a group directed by Rafelito Cepeda, and what he wanted then was to be a romantic singer. Merengue was not the plan. He had the instrument for it — a high, clean, unforced tenor that could sit on top of a brass section without shouting — and merengue is where that instrument was needed.

The Beduinos years

Wilfrido Vargas recruited him, and the pairing produced the records people still name first: Abusadora, written by Miguel Figueroa; Merecumbé; El Pájaro Chowi; El guardia del arsenal; Solina; Margarita. A 1982 album went out under both their names.

What he brought to that band was placement. Vargas built arrangements around horn lines that move fast and leave very little room, and a singer who fights them loses. Reyes sang over the top of them, in tune and in tempo and without strain, which is why the vocals on those records still sound easy fifty years later while the band underneath is working hard.

His own orchestra

He left to front his own group. Enamorar came out of that period and became the song most associated with his name — a merengue slow enough to hear the voice, which was the point of having him sing it.

He also sang with Los Hijos del Rey, and later cut a bachata album, Bachata de América, which put a merengue voice in a genre that in those years was only beginning to be treated as respectable.

Recognition at home

On 14 February 2025 the Oficina Nacional de Derecho de Autor, together with SGACEDOM, SODAIE and EGECAM, honoured him at the Casa Club del Colegio de Abogados in La Vega. ONDA’s director general, José Rubén Gonell Cosme, called it an act of justice toward one of the most notable interpreters of Dominican music. The town hall of La Vega gave him a pergamino the same evening.

Dominican musicians argue constantly about who the best merengue voice was. Reyes is one of the two or three names that come up every time the argument is held.