Deyvi Simé, born Deivi Antonio Rodríguez Simé, is a Dominican songwriter, singer and producer. He is filed here as a composer because that is the trade: several of the biggest bachatas of the last decade are songs he wrote for other people to sing.

La Romana

He is from La Romana, and he was the child who got asked to sing at every school event. When he was eight his grandparents had a guitar made for him — commissioned, not bought, which in a Dominican family is a decision rather than a present — and he had an uncle, the musician Francisco Xavier Rodríguez, to show him what the thing was for.

He wrote his first song at fourteen and put together a band with schoolmates called Prófugos 26. The name outlasted the band: the original address of his YouTube channel is still profugosmusica.

The first studio

What moved him from writing to recording was meeting Monchy, of one of the most successful duos bachata has produced. The friendship put him in a studio for the first time and on Dominican national television, which is a considerable head start for a teenager from La Romana with a notebook.

He later emigrated to the United States and settled in Boston, and kept writing from there. Dominican songwriting has a long history of being done at that distance.

Writing for the Mayimbe

Mal Educado was the first song he wrote for Antony Santos. It won Bachata of the Year at the thirty-fifth Soberano gala, on the same night Santos took Bachatero of the Year and the Gran Soberano, the first one ever given to traditional bachata.

The winners’ list printed the composer’s name in brackets after the performer’s. That bracket is the only reason a songwriter’s name survives an awards night at all, and it is worth noticing how thin the thread is: change the format of one list and the man who wrote the song disappears from the record of the year he won it.

Se Acabó El Abuso followed, for the same singer. Then Segundo Plato and Acaba Con Mi Vida for El Chaval de la Bachata; Antes Del Lunes and Pa’ Que Me Perdones for Héctor Acosta “El Torito”; Por Loco for El Gringo de la Bachata. He has also written for Elvis Martínez, Raulín Rosendo and Karlos Rosé, and outside bachata for merengue, salsa, urbano and balada singers.

Three of his songs are on Antony Santos’s recent album: Hay Amores de Más, cut with Akon, Desnuda, written with Henry Ulloa, and Corazón Olvida. Being called into the studio by the singer himself is the promotion a songwriter gets.

His own voice

He also records. Hipócrita Tú, made with Monchy, went to Primer Impacto and to Dominican-facing television in New York, and Malamaña, Cirugía, Si No La Puedo Olvidar, Cosa Vieja, Que Difícil, Que Será, Que Tu Sepas, Cuidado and Si Regresa La Boto are all his.

A songwriter who sings his own material is auditioning it as much as performing it. The versions under his own name are how the next singer hears the song.