Celia Cruz taught Adriano J. Brito to sing loud. As a boy in New York he belted her songs into the mirror, a habit he says explains the volume he still sings at as Afro Dominicano. He named his new single, released on 29 October, “Pura Candela”, Caribbean Spanish for pure fire, which he says is exactly what he and his band tried to put into the record.

That fire starts from the accordion. Brito plays in the line of merengue típico, the country merengue of the Cibao valley, where the accordion runs fast over the two-headed tambora drum and the scraped metal güira. From there he pushes it towards reggae, afrobeat and Afro-Cuban rhythm. Each style keeps its own flavour, like the ingredients in a sancocho, the Dominican stew he takes as his model.

Brito was born in New York and now lives in the Dominican Republic. He writes from both ends of that journey, in songs about migration, identity, love and resistance. The reggae reached him through Puerto Rico. Cultura Profética was the first Spanish-language reggae band he heard, before he set merengue típico over a reggae beat on “Un Merenguito en Kingston” for the Dominican Embassy in Jamaica. At home his parents played the Mexican songwriter Juan Gabriel, whose death in 2016 left Brito in tears. As a young man he rehearsed the bachata of Yoskar Sarante, still his favourite bachatero.

In New York his band has played the subway platforms well enough to be voted one of the best acts in Music Under New York, the transit authority’s programme for station performers.

Listen to “Pura Candela” HERE