The newly released compilation, simply titled “Conjunto Ingeniería,” includes songs cherry-picked by El Palmas Music from across the group’s career. The album captures all the creativity and youthful excitement that made them one of the first great ensembles of Venezuela’s tropical music history.
As the 1950s drew to an end, a group of students at Caracas’ Universidad Central de Venezuela became interested in tropical music and decided to form an orchestra. With the majority of the students coming from the engineering faculty, they were duly named Conjunto Ingeniería (The Engineering Group).
Tropical music, or música bailable (danceable music), was slowly making its way to Venezuela, but Conjunto Ingeniería had a secret weapon as one of their fellow students was studying in New York and every July he would return with the latest Latin big band sounds: Tito Puente, Machito, so they heard it first.
The nine young male musicians played the hippest sounds around, they were the obvious band to play high-society quinceañeras (15th birthday celebrations to mark a “girl’s journey into womanhood”), which their original bass player, Juan Marquez, says they did at least 80 times in their heyday, as well as playing countless times at the university, on TV, at weddings, and at carnival, where on one occasion they accompanied Celia Cruz.
“We played on all the TV channels”, says Marquez, “we were the first group to play at the launch party for ‘salsa’, a term that was established by the [Venezuelan] announcer Phidias Danilo Escalona… in Barquisimeto we were considered the best orchestra”, he remembers.
In 1961, they released their self-titled debut album, which featured mambo, guaracha, cha cha chá and charanga.
They followed it up with “Aqui Esta El Conjunto Ingenieria,” their second album in 1962, in which they showed once more that early rock could easily sit next to Latin music on tracks like “Mambo Rock”.
Their last album, “Boogaloo Con Ingenieria,” came out in 1967, and made clear the influence of New York City in their sound, with the group adopting the boogaloo of Pete Rodriguez, Tito Puente and Ricardo Ray.
Conjunto Ingeniería disbanded at the beginning of the 1970s, by which time many of their original members had left after graduating.
Author: World Music Central News Room
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