Niní Cáffaro — Erasmo Alfonso Cáffaro Durán, born in San Pedro de Macorís on 25 November 1939 — is the Dominican singer who carried «Por amor», by Rafael Solano, to first place at the first «Festival de la Canción Dominicana» in 1968, and who finished third for the country at the «OTI» festival of 1973. Those results made him known as the King of Festivals. Singing was never his only work: he spent most of his professional life in public administration and in business, and from 2010 he ran the Teatro Nacional Eduardo Brito for a decade.

Choir and television

As a boy he sang sacred music, in the Scholla Cantorum of the Dominican convent under Monsignor Rafael Bello Peguero and at the evening recitals of the Colegio La Milagrosa, where he went to school. Television opened the next door. «Rahintel» went on the air in 1959, and Rafael Solano used his programme there, «La hora del moro», to look for new voices; Cáffaro was one of the singers it brought through, as were Aníbal de Peña and Fernando Casado.

Solano, whom he calls his teacher and mentor, shaped what followed. After a first single, «Violeta», in 1961, Cáffaro recorded Juan Lockward’s «Ayúdame a olvidar» and «El corazón no miente». His first hits across the country were two Solano songs, «En ruinas», recorded after the April 1965 revolution, and «Cada vez más». He kept studying through all of it and took his degree at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in 1967.

«Por amor»

«AMUCABA», the association of Dominican musicians, singers and dancers, held the first «Festival de la Canción Dominicana» from 19 to 21 November 1968 at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música. Solano picked Cáffaro to sing «Por amor», and the song won. Second place went to «Canta mundo», by Manuel Troncoso, sung by Luchy Vicioso, and third to Solano’s «Mala suerte», sung by Julio César Defilló; the finalists also included Aníbal de Peña with his own «Tómala», Ángela Carrasco with «Son sueños» and Francis Santana with «Cuando te decidas». «Por amor» became the song most closely attached to his name, and it spread fast: by 1969 the Argentine singer Rubén Juárez had recorded it as a tango.

Festivals abroad

In 1969 he took another Solano song, «Está bien», to the «Primer Festival de la Canción Latina en el Mundo» in Mexico City and placed seventh in a field won by Lucecita Benítez of Puerto Rico. He has described the trip as the first time a Dominican singer competed at a festival outside the country.

On 10 November 1973 he sang Solano’s «El juicio final» at the «OTI» festival in the Palácio das Artes of Belo Horizonte, with Jorge Taveras conducting. The national juries gave him nine votes, one short of Mexico and Peru, who tied on ten before Mexico took the win on the tiebreak, and three more than Camilo Sesto, fifth for Spain. In the same period he recorded «Una primavera para el mundo», the Solano melody with words by René del Risco Bermúdez that Fernando Casado had introduced.

A second career

Cáffaro has said that living on music alone was hard in the Dominican Republic of the 1960s, and he never tried. From 1962 he headed the state’s malaria eradication service for more than two decades. In 1983 he joined the «Cervecería Nacional Dominicana» as public relations manager, and later handled public relations for the whole «E. León Jimenes» group; he has said he gave the brewery twenty-five years of his life.

Decree 709-10, of 23 December 2010, made him artistic director of the Teatro Nacional Eduardo Brito. Over the next ten years the theatre spent some 300 million pesos on new roofing, a larger car park, air conditioning, digital lighting and sound desks and stage machinery. In August 2020, ahead of the change of government, he said he was not expecting to stay on.

Recognition

«ACROARTE» gave him the Gran Soberano for 2020, its highest award, at a double ceremony on 15 June 2021 that covered two years, where Romeo Santos received the one for 2019. In his speech Cáffaro counted sixty-two years on stage and thanked Rafael Solano as his mentor and guide.

Legacy

The run of festival results between 1968 and 1973, every one of them with a song by Rafael Solano, is what gave Cáffaro the name he is still known by, and «Por amor» remains the song most identified with him. Alongside the stage he built a parallel record in public life: two decades in health administration, a quarter of a century at the «Cervecería Nacional Dominicana» and ten years at the head of the Teatro Nacional.