Jossie Esteban y La Patrulla 15 is a Dominican merengue orchestra formed in La Vega in 1979 by two childhood friends, the singer Jossie Esteban — born Esteban Grullón — and the pianist and arranger Alberto "Ringo" Martínez. It was among the most widely booked merengue bands of the 1980s and 1990s, recorded more than twenty albums, and returned to recording in 2025 after a decade away.

La Vega and Puerto Rico

Grullón and Martínez had been friends since childhood and both took up music as teenagers. Each left separately to study in Puerto Rico, and for a time neither played. When they met again they decided to go back to it on a professional footing, and the orchestra they assembled — billed at first as Orquesta Jossie Esteban y la Patrulla 15 — mixed Dominican musicians with Puerto Rican ones, an arrangement it kept for the rest of its working life. Henry Hierro played bass and arranged for its earliest lineups.

Twenty years of records

«Cuchú Cuchá» broke the group, and what followed kept it on Dominican and diaspora radio for two decades: «Agua de coco», «Pirulo», «El can», «Un hombre busca una mujer», «Enamoraíto», «El añoñaíto», «Noche de copas», «Cantinero», «El meneíto» and «Pegando el pecho» among them. They recorded for «Amapola», «Gema», «Artomax», «Top Ten Hits», «Ringo Records» and «Plátano Records», and took the «Congo de Oro» in Colombia, Orquesta del Año in New York, and several platinum certifications.

«El tiguerón» reached Latin radio in 1992, a classic-form merengue that stood out against what the genre’s newer generation was doing that decade.

Jossie Esteban on his own

«Nuestro 20 Aniversario» closed the orchestra’s most active run at the end of the 1990s. Jossie Esteban had joined the merengue trio «Zona Roja» in 1992, and from then on also recorded under his own name, from «Internacional» (1993) and «La Universidad del Merengue» (1998) through «Despierta» (2015) and «Ahora se goza más» (2017).

The return

In July 2025 the group released «Como YO», its first new song in more than ten years, billed as Jossie Esteban, Ringo y La Patrulla 15. The Venezuelan singer-songwriter Carlos Baute wrote it and Martínez, still the band’s musical director, arranged it; Martínez said they had never stopped rehearsing. The single was presented as the opening of a wider project, with an album of collaborations and live dates to follow, and the band was booked into 2026.

Legacy

The orchestra belonged to the generation that carried merengue through its most commercially expansive years, working the New York circuit as steadily as the one at home. Its personnel list runs past thirty players across two decades, Dominican and Puerto Rican, and included musicians who went on to lead bands of their own, Henry Hierro among them.