DJ Mari D, born Mariani Diplan, is a Dominican-American DJ from the Bronx. She plays dembow and Dominican music in New York, and she is one of the residents of the party series that has made that a category of its own.

Dominican Nights

Dominican Nights started at SOB’s in 2026 and bills itself with no hedging at all: a hundred per cent dembow and Dominican music, all night. She is on the rotating line-up, and the series has since spread to other rooms in the city.

New York has had Dominican nightlife for fifty years, but it ran on merengue and bachata, in Dominican-owned rooms, for a Dominican crowd. A dembow-only night at a downtown venue with a booking policy is a different proposition: the music is being programmed as a scene rather than served as a community function.

The Bronx and the island

She was born and raised in the Bronx, which puts her in the second-generation position that has produced a great deal of Dominican music without producing much Dominican-music writing about it.

A DJ in that position is doing something the recording artists are not. She is deciding, night after night, which Dominican records a New York room hears, which order they come in, and what they get mixed with. The role is curatorial and its effects are immediate, and her body of work takes the form of a party series rather than a discography.

She keeps her own site and takes her own bookings. There is no label, no manager’s name on the flyers and no press. What there is is a working diary, and it is full.