Rokabanda was a Dominican merengue orchestra founded in 1992 by Kinito Méndez and Bobby Rafael, the year they walked out of Pochy y su Cocoband. It took the Orquesta Revelación del Año prize at the Premios Casandra in its first full season.

Leaving the coconut

Méndez and Bobby Rafael had helped build Cocoband from its first lineup, and Méndez had written and arranged much of what made that band famous. Starting again from nothing, with Johnny Montaño managing and Alegró Productions behind them, was a bet that the songs had been the reason rather than the badge on the bass drum.

The bet paid immediately. The debut album was called Elegidos por el pueblo — elected by the people — and the follow-up was called Reelegidos!!! The two titles are a campaign in miniature, borrowed from Dominican electoral language and aimed at an audience that hears that language every four years.

The records

Elegidos por el pueblo carried La Muchachita, Los Piropos, Tanto Que Tú Dice, Esa Mujer Abraza Mi Vida and El Tamarindo. Méndez wrote and arranged; Bobby Rafael sang lead on much of it. Reelegidos!!! followed, and 100% comercial after that.

El Bacano, El Ñoñito and Los Hombres Maduros are the titles that outlived the decade. They are built the way Méndez built everything — a chorus that a crowd can sing back after one hearing, a comic character sketched in two lines, and a horn section that never lets the tempo sag.

Bobby Rafael keeps it open

Méndez left to record under his own name, and El Hombre Merengue in 1995 turned him into one of the biggest merengue acts of the decade. The band did not close when he went. Bobby Rafael carried it on as lead voice through Sólida, 100% Comercial — Corio, El Concón, Dominicano, La Lenguita — and Merengue y Más, and the catalogue runs to at least eight numbered volumes.

Méndez still programmes nights of Rokabanda material and still calls the people who come to them rokabanderos, which is the fan name the group left behind.