Gerardo Vargas, known as Jerry Vargas and billed as El Nazareno, was a Dominican merengue singer, pianist and bandleader. He was one of the recognisable voices of the genre’s golden years in the eighties, and the first three records he released as a bandleader were all banned from Dominican radio.

Las Guáranas

He was born in 1954 in Las Guáranas, in the province of Duarte. He became known locally as a boy for how well he played the guitar, and friends paid him to sing serenades. He has said that at twelve he traded his food for a guitar, and that the obsession grew from there until he made a living from it.

The piano he did not want

In 1968 he heard that some young men in Las Guáranas were forming a merengue orchestra and asked to join. The band needed a pianist rather than another guitarist, so he went every afternoon to the municipal music academy and learned the instrument. The piano became what he was known for, though the guitar remained what he preferred.

The orchestras

He joined El Combo Candela, from Nagua, as a pianist in 1970, and then the orchestra of El Charro Mejía in Pimentel. A trip to the capital to record with El Combo Candela at Radio Guarachita decided the rest: he stayed. From 1972 he was in Santo Domingo playing with professional bands, among them La Gente del País, La Santo Domingo All Star and Los Hermanos Rosario.

Three records, three bans

El Huevero was the record that made his name as a bandleader, and the national commission for public entertainment and broadcasting prohibited it. The merengue El Hijo de la Ruta was banned as well. His third release, El Cubanito, was censored in turn; the lyrics were rewritten to save it, and the commission rejected the new version too, on the grounds that the public was already humming the original.

The repertoire

What reached the audience anyway is what he is remembered for: Ojitos Mexicanos, Bésame Mucho, Teorema de Amor and Hijo de la Ruta among them. He remained one of the representative figures of the golden years of merengue until his death in Santo Domingo in January 2020, at sixty-five.