Dominican Republic——Wilfrido Vargas

                                                Vargas (Martínez), Wilfrido (Radhamés)

(b Altamira, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, 24 April 1949). Dominican trumpeter and composer. Vargas was born to a musical family, with an accordionist father and a flautist mother; both also played guitar. In the early 1970s, Vargas moved to Santo Domingo and formed the group Los Beduinos, a quartet playing bossa nova, rock, salsa, and merengue. Later he changed to an all-merengue repertoire and enlarged his group into what became perhaps the top merengue combo of the 1970s–80s.

Developed in conjunction with arranger Luis Pérez, Vargas’s style is known for breakneck speeds and influences from konpa, rock, salsa, and cumbia, but it also maintains traditional merengue rhythms in güira and tambora parts as well as saxophone jaleos, as in the 1980 hit “Abusadora.” The group’s success was also partly due to innovative marketing by Fania Records’ Bienvenido Rodríguez, whose efforts allowed merengue to compete successfully with salsa. Vargas also formed and managed the first all-female merengue orquesta, Las Chicas del Can, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

His album Animation was nominated for a Grammy in 1991, and in 1994 the Dominican government decorated him with the Order of Christopher Columbus. Daughter Alina Vargas is also a merengue vocalist and recorded the album Dos generaciones with her father in 2002.

Discography

Title	Year	Chart[1]
		Tropical Songs
El Jardinero	1984	3
La Medicina	1985	2
Vida, Canción y Suerte	1986	17
La Música	1987	4
El Baile	1987	2
Más Que Un Loco	1988	9
Animación	1989	9
Éxitos de	1990	9
Siempre Wilfrido	1990	5
Itinerario	1993	5
Abusadora	1993	-
Wilfrido Vargas & Sandy Reyes	1994	-
El Funcionario	1994	-
La Medicina	1994	-
El Africano	1999	-
El Extraterrestre	1995	-
Usted Se Queda Aqui	1996	-
Y Sus Consentidas	1996	-
Hoy	1997	-
El Africano	1999	-
Wilfrido Vargas	2000	-
www.wilfrido-vargas.com	2000	-
Musica	2001	-
Usted Se Queda Aqui, Vol.8	2001	-
Amor Casual, Vol. 10	2001	-
Dos Generaciones	2002	-
El Unico	2002	-

Thanks for Aurelio Cunha' s work.

Photos by Angelica Bautista