La Mayeya is the stage name of José María Disla, a Dominican bachata singer, songwriter and producer from San Francisco de Macorís. The name is feminine and he is not; it is a word he took, and it has stuck for two decades.

A house with a guitar in it

His father was a musician and so was his grandfather, which in the Cibao means the instrument was already in the house and somebody was already practising on it. He grew up watching his father rehearse with a guitar in his hands.

What was playing was boleros, bachata, merengue, salsa and ballads — not one tradition but the whole of what a Dominican radio dial offered. He started writing songs as a child and has been doing it ever since.

Songs about being left

The catalogue under his own name is consistent to the point of being a thesis. Ella Se Fue, Olvídame Tú, Corazón De Piedra, Ya Me Enteré, Jugando A Ser Infiel, Camas Separadas, Ni Diablo Ni Santo, Se Está Muriendo Un Hombre, Te Irá Mejor Sin Mí, Ya Supérame.

That is the subject bachata was built on and it is not exhausted. He writes it plainly, from the point of view of the person who found out rather than the person who did it.

There is a comic streak alongside it — an animated video, a parody of a Shelow Shaq record, a song about a monkey. A bachatero who can also be funny has somewhere to go when the ballads get heavy, and the Dominican audience has always rewarded both at once.

Bachatas para el Alma

He signed to a label and made a covers album, and the idea behind it is better than most covers albums get: take songs from outside the genre that have outlived their own moment, and rebuild them as bachatas.

The lead track is a ranchera — the definitive Mexican song of romantic humiliation, made permanent by Juan Gabriel — turned into a bachata. Those two traditions are closer than they look. Both are about being wronged and saying so at length, and the guitar figure that carries a bachata does the same job as the mariachi trumpet answering a line.

Ese Tipo Soy Yo and ¿Cuál Adiós? come off the same record. He came back to the Dominican Republic to present it, after years of working the audience abroad.