Las Chicas Del Can

Las Chicas del Can stand as the first all-female merengue ensemble in Dominican music history. Frequent membership turnover marked their three-decade run, yet the act still delivered a consistent string of chart singles and albums. Singer Belkis Concepcion launched the project in 1976, gathering a roster of teenage and twentysomething instrumentalists and vocalists that she initially billed simply as Las Chicas. Five years later, musical director, bandleader, and industry veteran Wilifrido Vargas stepped in as producer, securing the updated name Las Chicas del Can. Their uncommon lineup and propulsive merengue style drew rapid acclaim. Illness sidelined Concepcion the following year, so Vargas installed the group’s second vocalist, fourteen-year-old Miriam Cruz, as a temporary stand-in; the arrangement turned permanent in 1984.

Throughout the 1980s the ensemble issued numerous successful singles and albums, among them “El Negro No Puede,” “La Media María,” “Sukaína,” “Juana la Cubana,” “Culeca,” “Ta’ Pillao,” “Fuego,” “Fiebre,” and “Las Pequeñas Cosas,” several of which earned gold or platinum status. Concepcion filed suit against Vargas to reclaim the group name on the grounds that she had founded it, but his earlier trademark registration prevailed and she lost the case. The lineup grew to incorporate vocalists Miriam Cruz and Eunice Betances together with Luchy Betances and Verónica Medina. Medina departed for a solo career in 1987; Heidy Bello filled the vacancy until 1991, when Arismar Eduardo and Rosana Eusebio assumed the vocal roles. Ongoing personnel shifts led to a 1992 rebranding as Míriam Cruz y Las Chicas. The group released the album Nueva Vida that year, whose single, Juan Luis Guerra’s “Te Propósito,” reached the top of the charts. Follow-up track “La Loba” likewise climbed to number one on both merengue and world-music tallies. Cruz and her band toured Europe in 1993 and 1994. After returning, they scored a global hit with “Con Agua de Sal” and spent another two years on the European circuit.

Vargas kept the original Las Chicas del Can name active in 1993 by assembling a new roster of young singers and instrumentalists that included Florángel del Villar, Adalgisa Báez, Guatemalan singer Michell Flores, and Costa Rican trumpeter Ana Lucía Retana Saavedra. This configuration produced its own sequence of hits—“Juana la Cubana,” “Amigo Travieso,” “Voy Pa’ Allá,” “Hacer el Amor con Otro,” “Celoso,” and “Explosivo y Sin Compromiso”—along with the albums Botando Chispas (1994) and Derramando Sueños (1996). Flores exited in 1998, prompting another split. A third lineup assembled in 1999, yet its recordings never charted, and the group dissolved by 2000.

In 2005 Vargas sold the name to Venezuelan promoter Omar Enrique, who resold it to promoter Evelio Herrera. Operating under the billing Nuevo las Chicas del Can, Herrera repeatedly hired and dismissed members, sowing discord within the ranks. He transferred the rights in 2009 to Vargas’s brother Jorge Luis Báez, who relaunched a five-piece version fronted by Vargas’s daughter Alina Vargas. She began a solo career in 2011, after which the band dissolved permanently.