Roger Zayas-Bazán —born in Santo Domingo on 2 August 1961— is a Dominican musician and, since the group’s founding in the early 1980s, the only original member remaining alongside Juan Luis Guerra himself in Juan Luis Guerra 4.40.

From rock bands to a jingle studio

He began musical training at ten and was recording radio and television jingles by fourteen. At fifteen he joined the rock group Juventud ’75 with Alex Mansilla and Carolina Hernández, and the following year founded Nasty with them and Marco Hernández. At eighteen, a cultural exchange program took him to the United States for a year, playing in Columbia High School’s jazz band and marching band; back home, he founded Friends, which performed with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1984, while working as a sound engineer at Estudios Ecmas.

An accidental quartet

Zayas met Juan Luis Guerra when his own first job as a sound engineer coincided with Guerra’s first job writing radio jingles. Together with Mariela Mercado, from the group Módulo, and Maridalia Hernández, they formed an impromptu vocal quartet to dust off a cappella transcriptions Guerra had been assigned as homework at Berklee, taking the name «4.40» from the universal tuning pitch. Their 1984 debut album, «Soplando», fused merengue with Manhattan Transfer-style jazz vocal harmony and sold poorly for being too soft to dance to — it was later reissued by Warner in 1991 as a collector’s item. Karen Records only signed the group once they proved, with «Por Eso Ahora», that they could make a livelier record.

Tragedy on tour

A car accident during a 1988 tour of Venezuela with Sergio Vargas killed several people, including the percussionist Ángel «Catarey» Andújar, and silenced the group for a year. On their return in 1989 they assembled a touring band for the first time — until then they had performed to prerecorded tracks — and that same year «Ojalá Que Llueva Café» became their international breakthrough.

Legacy

Through the group’s later albums, from «Areíto» (1992) to «Fogaraté» (1994) — during whose recording Zayas was widowed and left raising his young son alone, with Guerra’s personal support — and on through «Ni Es lo Mismo Ni Es Igual» (1999) and beyond, including a period with singer Adalgisa Pantaleón, Zayas has remained the group’s sole original member besides its leader. He describes himself as 4.40’s number one fan and says he has no plans to retire.