José Ernesto Chapuseaux Guerra, known as Negrito Chapuseaux, was a Dominican singer, dancer and composer born in Santo Domingo on 17 October 1911 and, as one half of Damirón y Chapuseaux, credited alongside Damirón with carrying Dominican merengue across Latin America and the Caribbean.

From the Santo Domingo Jazz Band to exile

He began performing alongside pianist Francisco Damirón, Freddy Coronado and a young Billo Frómeta in the dance orchestra Santo Domingo Jazz Band. In December 1937, Chapuseaux and Damirón left the country into political exile from the Trujillo dictatorship, settling in Venezuela, where together with Frómeta they helped found the Billo’s Happy Boys, forerunner of the later Billo’s Caracas Boys.

Panama, Los Alegres Tres, and a new life

The duo went on to Panama, where Chapuseaux met the singer and actress Silvia De Grasse; the three formed the trio Los Alegres Tres, folding Panamanian tambora rhythms into their Dominican repertoire. Chapuseaux and De Grasse later married and settled in Puerto Rico, with Damirón and his own family following.

Legacy

Chapuseaux died in Santo Domingo on 19 November 1986, at 75. As the vocalist and dancer in one of Dominican music’s most consequential export acts, he helped make merengue a Caribbean-wide currency decades before it became a global one.