Michel el Buenón — Michel Batista, born on 7 September 1970 in Batey 7, Barahona — is a Dominican salsa singer and composer. He wrote Hasta Ayer, which Marc Anthony made a standard, and he has spent a career being better known abroad for his songs than at home for his name.

From the batey

He came out of a sugar batey in the deep south. He sang in a church choir as a child, won a school music festival at eight, and at twelve took first place in a regional competition on Radio Barahona. He wrote his first song at thirteen.

Then he did what talent from the south does: he went to Santo Domingo. He sang in bars and discotheques and worked the hotel circuit — the Sheraton, the Napolitano, El Embajador — and the resorts at Casa de Campo, Sosúa and Puerto Plata, which is where Dominican singers of his generation learned to hold a room.

Tabou Combo

His first serious job was with Tabou Combo, the Haitian group out of Port-au-Prince that had settled in New York — one of the most important bands in konpa. A Dominican from a Barahona batey singing in that band is not a common line in either country’s music history.

He recorded Inflaciones General, La Llave and Relimen with them, and wrote Apipi, which in Spanish became El Jardinero and which he cut with Wilfrido Vargas. He returned to the group later, as Tabou Combo Superstar, under its director Adolfo Chancy.

Between 1982 and 1987 he sang with Johnny Ventura’s orchestra, five years that turned him into a writer, and recorded Tuyo Más Que Tuyo, by Bienvenido Fabián.

Hasta Ayer

He went solo in 1995 with Amigo de Qué, and the record travelled: it held first place on La Mega in New York for twelve weeks. Brujería followed, then De Ahí Nadie Como Él in 2001, 100% Sabroso in 2002, and three records in 2005 — Llegó Michel el Buenón, Víveme and Extrañándote.

But the song that carried furthest was one he gave away. Hasta Ayer, sung by Marc Anthony, is his. He took the Premios Casandra in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and was nominated again in 2008 and 2011.

Seven languages and a Congo de Oro

He performs in Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Papiamento and Haitian Creole — he has sung Charles Aznavour in French and Wonderful World as a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

In February 2024 he took the Congo de Oro at the Carnaval de Barranquilla, the highest award a foreign act can win at its Festival de Orquestas — a Dominican salsero honoured at the largest carnival in Colombia.