Toque Profundo, fronted since the start by the singer and guitarist Tony Almont, is a Dominican rock band formed on 9 August 1989 and generally counted as the country’s definitive rock act and the longest-running one still active.

Fourteen days before the Olympiad

The keyboardist Lorenzo Zayas-Bazán heard about that year’s Rock Olympiad and called the drummer Máximo Gómez, who brought in his cousin, the guitarist Leo Susana; Susana agreed to join on one condition, that Tony Almont sing. Zayas-Bazán and Gómez doubted Almont could carry the band until they saw him perform. The four wrote their first songs in the apartment of Susana’s aunt in Santo Domingo, formed the band a fortnight before the contest, and took first place in the sixth Rock Olympiad, the event that introduced most new Dominican rock talent through the 1980s and 1990s.

«Sueños y pesadillas del tercer mundo»

The bassist Tomás Álvarez, formerly of Los Desafortunados, joined at the end of 1990. In 1992 the band became the first in Dominican rock to release an album on CD, «Sueños y pesadillas del tercer mundo», whose singles «Amigo», «Mi país», «El bolero del biónico» and «El jevito» got heavy play on the country’s rock stations and won the group the Premios Casandra for Best Rock Group. They played «Rock Sobre las Piedras» at Altos de Chavón that year alongside New Page, Coral Negro, IO and Qüo Vadis. Susana and Gómez left in 1991 to form the band Jodio Loco Sucio, known as JLS.

Benidorm and «Moneda»

In 1993 Toque Profundo represented the Dominican Republic at the Benidorm Festival in Spain with «Viajero», now one of the standards of Dominican rock; the song later appeared in the Cuban director León Ichaso’s film «Bitter Sugar» (1996). The guitarist Clemente Portillo, formerly of AbaddonRD, joined in 1995, and the second album, «Moneda» (1996), sold out within three months on the strength of «Lloraré», «Ramona» — a Spanish-language version of Eric Clapton’s «Layla» — and «¿Dónde estabas tú?».

«Cría cuervos»

«Cría cuervos» (1999), the band’s best-selling record, carried «Libérame», «Noche sin luna», «Botas negras» and the live favourite «Dando a’co», and won Album of the Year at the 1999 Lo Mejor del Rock Dominicano awards. It took the band on its first U.S. tour, including a Miami merengue-and-bachata festival where they played as the only rock act on a bill in front of some six thousand people, and into supporting slots for Juanes, Maná and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs in Santo Domingo between 2000 and 2002.

«Magia» and a quiet stretch

«Magia» (2002) pushed the band toward Hindu and African-influenced sound, with the guest musician Phillip Brown on the ballad «Paradisso» and a cover of «Tabaco y ron», the merengue popularised by Fernando Villalona. Toque Profundo closed the first two editions of the ANivelDe.com Dominican rock festival, in 2002 and 2004, but by 2003 the band was largely inactive, and its members scattered into side projects — Joel Lazala with Marteovenus and Los Manolos, Portillo with Blues Company, Álvarez with Cerobit and Tabutek, Almont with Las Marías and Diagonal B — before Portillo’s return from the United States in 2005 brought the band back together.

Since then

A 20th-anniversary concert at Hard Rock Café Santo Domingo in 2009 drew the largest crowd a Dominican rock band had had to that point, with every musician who had ever played in the band on stage. «Rock Radio» (2013), a tribute to the DJs and stations that had shaped a generation of Dominican listeners, and the compilation «Vivo» (2014) followed, the same year the band won the Soberano al Mérito for its 25 years. A re-recorded, remixed version of «Cría cuervos» appeared in 2022.

Legacy

Almost every later generation of Dominican rock has shared a stage or a story with Toque Profundo: Santuario first drew national attention in 2003 at a Hotel Jaragua tribute Almont invited them to play, and Tribu del Sol shared a 2017 Hard Rock Live bill with the band alongside Aljadaqui — a role, more than any one record, that has kept Toque Profundo at the centre of the country’s rock scene for over three decades.