Xiomara Fortuna — born in Monte Cristi in 1959 and known as the Queen of Fusion — is a Dominican singer and songwriter. Working from the island’s Afro-Dominican music — mangulina, salve, congos, gagá — and joining it to jazz and other contemporary forms, she has built a discography regarded as a valuable record of Afro-Dominican song, and in 2021 Rolling Stone ranked her album «Viendoaver» ninth among the year’s best Spanish-language records.

Monte Cristi

Her mother introduced her to mangulina and to the work songs of the countryside. She came into the arts at twelve through theatre and local cultural groups, and as a teenager was drawn to the nueva trova and to songs with a social message, writing her first songs in those years. She sang in clubs and community centres in her town and across the Cibao before making her debut in the capital at a festival in the Teatro Nacional. She went on to study art at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, but as a musician she is largely self-taught. She has named the «Movimiento 14 de Junio», the death of Trujillo, the war of 1965 and the history of slavery as the events that marked her music.

«Kaliumbé»

With the guitarist Tony Vicioso she formed «Kaliumbé», the group in which she developed her style, fusing mangulina, priprí, salve, congos and gagá with jazz. Its first LP, «De la loma al llano» (1987), was financed by the women’s organisation «Mujeres en Desarrollo Dominicana». She also joined Vickiana, Sonia Silvestre and Miriam Cruz, among others, on «Canto paz y un mundo nuevo».

Europe and Africa

In the 1990s her career moved to Europe, with performances in Switzerland and France; she worked with the saxophonist Archie Shepp and shared stages with Miriam Makeba and Touré Kunda, and also played in Russia and Cuba. «Balbuceos» (1996) and «Kumbajei» (1999) come from those years. Leading «Kaliumbé» and later «SinHora», she has taken her music to festivals in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Venezuela, Colombia, Port-au-Prince and Puerto Rico. Abroad her work was filed as Caribbean ethnic jazz; she prefers to call it Caribbean fusion.

A new generation

In the new century she opened her sound to rock and song and to younger Dominican musicians. «Tonada para un querer» (2004) was followed by «Paseando» (2010), with guests including Pavel Núñez and Rita Indiana; on «Pa cantarte a ti» and «Solo poemas» she turned to the songs and poetry that shaped her. She has recorded with El Prodigio and Vakeró, worked with Oscar Micheli as producer and arranger, and sang «Voy a apagar la luz» with Pirou Pérez on «Amargue Sessions». She releases her records independently through «Ile Akwa»; the EP «Rosa y azul» (2018) addresses violence against women.

Recognition

In 2019 she marked forty years in the arts with «Llegando voy», a concert at the Teatro Nacional. When the «Premios Soberano» introduced a category for alternative music, she was among its first nominees in 2018, and at the 2023 ceremony she won it for both 2021 and 2022. «Viendoaver» (2021) made Rolling Stone’s list of the year’s best Spanish-language albums, and on 15 July 2022 she opened the 27th edition of the «La Mar de Músicas» festival in Cartagena, Spain.

«Confesiones de mosquitero»

Her album of March 2026, «Confesiones de mosquitero», was conceived and recorded entirely in Monte Cristi, co-produced with the young producer Ángel Pichardo Reyes. Its eight songs, all her own, take on dembow, reggaeton and Afrobeat; the street’s pulse, she said, is dembow.

Legacy

Xiomara Fortuna belongs to the generation that brought Afro-Dominican roots into contemporary Dominican music, alongside figures such as Luis "Terror" Días. The «alternative» label, she has said, names songwriters who built their work on that African heritage, and she regards the younger artists of that scene with a mother’s pride.