Kaki Vargas is a Dominican merengue and bolero singer from Villa Altagracia, and the youngest of the Vargas brothers. Sergio Vargas is his brother, and so is Johnny Vargas.

The orchestras

He sang with Dioni Fernández y El Equipo, where he was the voice on Recomencemos, El Millonario and Pasada la Vida. He sang with Los Hijos del Rey. And he sang in his brother Sergio’s orchestra.

Those are three of the machines that carried Dominican merengue through its biggest years, and being trusted in all three says more about a singer than any single hit does.

The vocal that was replaced

He has told a story about one record that explains the whole shape of his career. He sang the lead, then left the orchestra. His brother came back, they took his vocal off the track and put Sergio’s on, and that version is the one everyone knows. He sang it himself again forty years later.

An orchestra belonged to whoever owned it, and a voice was a part that could be swapped.

His own band

He has led his own orchestra for close to thirty years. Los Mosquito Puyan is the song people name first; Arisleyda, Ando Buscando un Amor, 80 Casitas and Como Tú belong to the same run, and he released Villa Altagracia en Patronales in 2019 — a merengue named for his own town’s festival.

In October 2023 he relaunched, working with the producer Alberto Bernabé, and announced a record crossing several genres. He sings bolero as well as merengue, which is rarer than it sounds in a country where most singers pick one and stay.