Four-time Latin GRAMMY® winner and Dominican singer-songwriter Vicente García unveils Puñito de Yocahú, his highly anticipated return to recording and first album in six years. The album is available today on all digital platforms.
Continuing his fruitful collaboration with 28-time Latin GRAMMY® winning Puerto Rican producer Eduardo Cabra, García digs deep into the Caribbean’s cultural and sonic fabric, connecting musically with his homeland, the Dominican Republic, through bachata and merengue, while embracing the deities, figures, and stories that have shaped Latin America’s island heritage.
“Through chronicles and landscapes, this album draws inspiration from the unique characteristics that define Quisqueya—a journey from our origins, seeking to understand the present and heal the future,”García shared about Puñito de Yocahú.
In an unparalleled rhythmic exploration, García draws from every sonic facet of his native Dominican Republic, traversing bachata, merengue, and variations like mambo, while innovating through the fusion of tradition with electronic beats and tools like vocoder, expanding his interpretive range. Salsa, reggae, and funk coexist harmoniously throughout the production, infusing each story with Caribbean warmth.
In this heartfelt tribute to his homeland, García invokes pre-Columbian figures and Taíno deities such as Yocahú, God of cassava and fertility, and Atabey, mother of the waters, in songs like “Puñito de Yocahú,” the album’s title track, and “El Huracán,” the album’s focus track.
As a chronicler of Caribbean emotions, in “El Huracán,” García transforms the feared hurricanes that strike the islands annually into a powerful metaphor for turbulent love.
The GRAMMY® nominee connects with his Afro-Caribbean roots through ancestral work songs while invoking the goddess Atabey in a plea for peace amid emotional turmoil.
Puñito de Yocahútranscends tales of love and heartbreak to become an anthem of cultural resilience. The production honors the Caribbean’s ancestral sounds, acknowledges Indigenous peoples and their wounds, and issues a call for cultural and social consciousness—a plea to preserve identity in an increasingly connected world.
Puñito de Yocahú tracklist:
1. Puñito de Yocahú
2. Quisqueya
3. Abusadora
4. El Huracán
5. Mambo Violento
6. Buscar Otra Cosa
7. Lío en el Batey
8. Bajo el Flamboyán
9. Voy en Coche
10. Boca e’ Nigua
11. Ningún Ningún
12. Coger el Monte
13. Amar en el Yuna