2021 will be marked as one of the saddest and most dire years for Dominicans. As never before, the country saw its greatest artistic glories of popular music depart, with the death of merenguero Johnny Ventura, salsa creator Johnny Pacheco and musician Jorge Taveras. And in the locution Willy Rodríguez. Four figures with a long and successful career in their areas, who with their work marked the presence of Dominican art beyond borders.
The saddest news
The event of the death of Johnny Ventura was one of the saddest news in this 2021. On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 28, the country shook upon learning of the death of “El Caballo Mayor”, due to a heart attack, 81 years old, while he was in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros. People, still incredulous, expected it to be false news, the kind that flood social networks, but unfortunately it was not like that, the Dominicans had to begin to assimilate the painful death of the most transcendental artist in popular music. Three days of national mourning and a wake that concluded with an emotional and solemn ceremony at the Palacio de los Deportes, where the Dominican art class and the townspeople appeared to offer the last goodbye to the legendary merenguero. His son Jandy Ventura and the Ventura orchestra took the stage to perform his meringues, thus the best tribute was paid to him. In the end, a long caravan moved to the neighborhood of his native Villa Juana, where the tears and laments of its people turned the scene into a single blanket of tears and pain. Ventura’s remains were buried in the Cristo Redentor Cemetery.
Sauce creator
Starting the year, in February, the Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco, one of the founders of the iconic Latin music label Fania Records, died at the age of 85 in a New York hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia. Pacheco is remembered as a prolific composer and musical arranger whose work helped fuel the careers of Celia Cruz and Rubén Blades, and Fania Records served as a powerful platform for disseminating Cuban music in the 1970s. As a producer, his vast Musical knowledge of various Latin music genres helped ignite the rise of salsa. Pacheco thus became a legend of Latin music in the world.
The “Legend of the radio”
July was a month of sad news, because before Ventura’s death, on Tuesday the 6th, the voice of the “Legend of the radio” Willy Rodríguez, who lost the battle against Covid-19, was fading. Rodríguez was one of the great pillars of Dominican radio, involved in the communication of social commitment with its orientation channels at Christmas and Easter. It was for more than three decades the living spirit of the Z101, one of the most popular and tuned Dominican stations. At the end of the year the music was dressed in mourning for the death of Jorge Taveras, one of the most established artists in the country: pianist, arranger and musical director. Taveras was 76 years old. As reported by the Taveras family, he died of consequences generated by COVID-19. This week the humorist Ramón Asencio, the eternal "Tano Kao", in New York City.
Announcers
This year the locution lost several of its voices, in addition to Willy Rodríguez, the deaths of the announcers and journalists Ramón Aníbal Ramos, in New York and Santiago Josep Tavárez, were very regrettable, and the announcer Jorge Herrera died . Orlando Ortiz, the voice of Cima 100 and Lino Cruz, who worked in different media in New York and Georgia, also left.
In the music
The Dominican bachatero Julio Dolores Díaz Almonte, better known as Manny Jhovanny, died in a tragic accident at Kilometer 32 of the Duarte Highway. The Dominican bachatera Clary Soto, who died of coronavirus. The Dominican rapper based in the United States, known as “Relámpago La Amenaza” also died this year.
Plastic artists
The Dominican artist Nadal Walcot, recognized for his naive style paintings, with which he portrayed the Cocola culture, died in his native San Pedro de Macorís at the age of 76. Modest Tony de los Santos, the surrealist painter from Santiago de los Caballeros, brother of historian, art critic and painter Danicel, died in the United States.
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