Anthony Cariño is a Dominican bachata singer and composer who works under the billing El Babankú de la Bachata. He plays the guitar-bachata circuit rather than the crossover one, and his audience found him through his own video channel rather than through radio.

The Cariño name

He carries the name of Robin Cariño, the bachatero born Seggie Pie in Batey Isabela, Barahona, and he is billed on other people’s uploads as his son. What the relationship actually was is argued about in public — one widely repeated account says Robin did not father him but raised him — and he has told the story himself at length in interview.

What is not in dispute is the debt. His longest recording is a tribute to Robin Cariño, and it is the most watched thing on his channel. He also sings in Spanish, where the older man’s repertoire drew on the Haitian-descended batey communities of the south that produced them both.

The records

Sigue Afuera, produced by DJ Kruel, is the one that travelled furthest by a wide margin. Around it sit Arráncame el Alma, Machete Gillete, El Caballito, Se Llevó Mi Mujer, El Galón, Esa Mujer, Pasión y Amor and La Felicidad, and Los Tres Grandes, cut with Rochy, Come el Bofe and La Nena.

The titles tell you what kind of bachata it is. This is the cutting, unsentimental strain of the genre — the woman who left, the machete, the man who is still outside — rather than the romantic bachata built for export.

Live

He works with a full band on the Dominican circuit, playing venues around Santo Domingo. Centro León has written about the style he built for himself: lyrics loaded with feeling and a way of phrasing bachata that is recognisably his.