Rikarena is a Dominican merengue quartet formed in 1994 by the composer Kinito Méndez, who built it as a more romantic, radio-driven counterpart to the harder merengue of his own bands and has written for it ever since without ever singing lead in it.

«¡Sacúdelo que tiene arena!»

The original lineup — Henry Trinidad, Shiro Méndez, Guarionex Castro and Wester Hernández — debuted immediately as a hit with «¡Sacúdelo que tiene arena!» (1994), led by «El merengue riko» alongside «Ay!!», «Te dejé de querer» and «Nunca te mentí»; the album won the group Orquesta Revelación del Año at the Premios Casandra. «Más rika que nunca» (1995) carried the group beyond the Dominican Republic, into Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Peru and Central America, and «Sacúdelo» itself took the Congo de Oro for Best Foreign Merengue at Barranquilla’s Carnival Orchestra Festival in 1996.

New voices

Castro and Hernández left at the end of 1997, after the album «Sin medir distancia», which carried «Antonio Pérez» — written and arranged by Freddy Gerardo — among its hits. Their replacements, Daniel Santacruz and a singer known as Peter, recorded «...Con to’» (1998), the group’s biggest seller behind its debut, built around «Fuego con to’»; by then Rikarena had more traction in Colombia and Panama than at home. «Con arena nueva» (2000), carrying «Cuando el amor se daña», was its last major domestic hit; Wester Hernández rejoined for «Pa’ rato» (2003).

The Colombian dispute

Rikarena’s following in Colombia, built up since the 1990s, later produced a legal fight over the name itself. In 2018 the promoter Álvaro Galeano began running a Colombian act called Los Originales de Rikarena, made up partly of former members including Guarionex Castro and Wester Hernández; in 2024 Galeano applied to register that name with Colombia’s trademark authority, and in April 2025 Kinito Méndez sued his company for unfair competition, and separately accused him of trying to “impersonate” the group he had founded. Méndez secured a commercial-name registration for Rikarena in Colombia that June, though the underlying trademark question remained unresolved as the two sides traded countersuits.

Legacy

The current lineup, fronted by the founding members Henry Trinidad and Shiro Méndez alongside Jimmy Aquino, still tours and records — a 2015 single, «La perdida», and later recordings, among them a duet with Jackeline Estévez, kept the group active more than three decades after «El merengue riko» first put it on the radio.