Voz a Voz is a Dominican vocal group that sings bachata with soul harmony underneath it. They started as a trio and have worked as a duo for most of their recording career.

Hotel work

The founders were Gilberto César D’Oleo, who performs as Gio, Ammy Yatniel Acosta and David Leonardo Rosario Pimentel. They were singing in hotels around Santo Domingo when a producer from the Urban Box Office label heard them at the Hotel Bávaro and signed them.

En presencia del futuro was the debut, and the pitch behind it was a pun they took seriously: a new R&B, meaning rhythm and bachata. Three-part vocal arrangements are not standard practice in the genre, and that is what the group is actually for.

The duo

The line-up narrowed to Gio D’Oleo and Ronny Mercedes, and no account explains when or why. What is documented is the run of records that followed: El mundo gira, then singles across a decade — Un día más, Mil lágrimas, Estuvo aquí, Te necesito, Duele saber, one of them cut with Daniel Santacruz.

The song that moved furthest was El mejor perfume, a duet with Lorenzo Méndez of La Original Banda El Limón de Salvador Lizárraga. Putting a Dominican bachata group next to a Sinaloan banda is not an obvious pairing, and it worked: the record charted in the tropical field and brought the group a Premios Juventud nomination.

Where the records travel

The compilation Destiny arrived in April 2014 through Sony Music and Luz Record, carrying El mejor perfume and I Swear, which found an audience in France and placed on the iTunes downloads chart there.

The touring goes further than the diaspora circuit most Dominican acts work. In 2014 they played three dates in Tokyo and returned to Hawaii, where they had been before, with shows in Kona and Honolulu — an audience with no Dominican community behind it, hearing bachata on its own terms.

La eterna maleta followed in 2017 and León éxodo in 2021, and singles have kept coming since.