Rafael Ovalles Amaro, known as Sony Ovalles (also written Sonny), was a Dominican pianist, arranger, composer, and producer, one of the figures who shaped the sound of merengue orchestras in the 1970s and 1980s. He was pianist and arranger of Wilfrido Vargas and «Los Beduinos», arranged for Sergio Vargas, Rubby Pérez, and Las Chicas del Can, among many others, and in later years worked with salsa groups.

Origins and training

Ovalles was born in Salcedo, in what is now the Hermanas Mirabal province, in 1940, the son of Carlos Ovalles and Nidia Amaro. After his parents separated he went to live with an uncle in Castillo, in the province of Duarte, where he worked in a grocery store and a gas station. There the composer Cuto Estévez saw him beating out rhythms on the counter to the music of «La Sonora Matancera» and brought him into the baton corps of the local school and then into the municipal music academy, where he studied solfège and trumpet and joined the town band.

At seventeen he moved to Santo Domingo and joined the band of the Marina de Guerra, where he learned snare drum, horn, and trumpet, and later piano.

First orchestras

Through the Marina band he met Papito Bazán, pianist of Félix del Rosario's orchestra, who taught him piano and popular music in exchange for a monthly fee. When Bazán missed a performance, Del Rosario took Ovalles as his replacement, and in 1962 he spent about nine months with the orchestra, where he learned to play boleros. He then joined the group of Negrito Truman, and Johnny Ventura hired him for his own orchestra, with which he stayed about four years and traveled to Venezuela, New York, and Puerto Rico. He also studied for six years at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, with the pianist and journalist Susana Morillo among his teachers, and left it unfinished because of the touring; the rest of his training, he said, came from books and from watching other musicians.

With Wilfrido Vargas

From 1973 he worked with Wilfrido Vargas, who used to visit his home to watch him practice. When the producer Bienvenido Rodríguez offered to record Vargas, who had no material ready, Ovalles supplied songs of his own, among them «El Semáforo», «Don José», and «No Me Pise los Zapatos». As pianist and arranger of «Los Beduinos» he worked on records such as «El Jardinero», «La Medicina», and «Vida, Canción y Suerte», and he is credited with arrangements on «Atrevida», «13 Años», and «Bachata Merengue». Vargas said in a television interview with Domingo Bautista that Ovalles was decisive in turning his musical ideas into finished form and that the two of them created what became known as the Beduino sound.

After roughly a decade he left, tired of touring and with other artists asking him for arrangements, and in 1986 he directed the project of Rubby Pérez's own orchestra.

Arranger of the eighties

In the 1980s he worked as pianist and arranger under Bienvenido Rodríguez for Sergio Vargas, Rubby Pérez, and Monchy Capricho, alongside Manuel Tejada, Juan Valdez, and Ramón Orlando, and spent a year with Los Kenton in Puerto Rico. His first arrangement for Sergio Vargas was «Madre»; he arranged a full production for Rubby Pérez, and «Madre Mía», «Cumandé», and «Mi Tonto Amor» are among his arrangements. He then settled as an independent arranger.

His work is credited on «Noche», «La Tierra Tembló», and «Por Ella» by Sergio Vargas; «De Color de Rosas», «Nadie Me Lo Quita», and «Más Fuerte» by Las Chicas del País; «Besitos», «Mi Papuchy», «La Espinita», and «Cosita Linda» by Nando Galán; «Voy pa' Allá» and «Celoso» by Las Chicas del Can; «El Malquerido» by Alex Bueno; and «El Atracador», «The New York Band», and «Tus 20 Años» by Vicente Pacheco. He also wrote arrangements for the orchestras of Joseíto Mateo and Los Hermanos Rosario, and for «Los Sabrosos del Merengue», «Chantelle», Juancho Viloria, Mano de Piedra Durán, Víctor Waill, Raulín Rosendo, and Santiago Cerón.

Own projects

Ovalles led his own group, «La Esencia Dominicana», which the singer Víctor Waill joined for a year after leaving Wilfrido Vargas and later took over. He recorded instrumental piano merengue albums under his own name, including «Merengues Instrumentales» and «Piano Merengues Instrumental», and the album «Sol Caribe». He formed the salsa group «El Complot», with Mike Peguero as singer, founded an orchestra with Vicente Pacheco as vocalist, and produced for other salsa singers. In the early 2000s he worked on the first songs of Asdrúbal, among them «Contigo», and recorded a full album with the salsa singer Michel, which includes «Esa Mujer».

Recognition and death

The Dominican press credits Ovalles with a single statuette, as best arranger at the Premios Casandra, after more than ten nominations. On merengue records the shout «¡Suena Sony!» is heard when his piano comes in. In his last years he was critical of a market that, in his view, favored immediacy and commercial results over quality.

He died in Santo Domingo on 13 December 2020, at eighty, of a heart attack, and was buried in Salcedo.