Jose Cerezo
I was born on the 5th of November 1972 in Caracas, Venezuela. My first knowledge about the Venezuelan percussion and culture I owe to my father, professor of folklore Ramon Cerezo.
My father has dedicated his life to researching and displaying the culture of Venezuelan peoples or folk groups. His own musical group “the Expresion folklorica de Venezuela”, founded in 1980, rehearsed twice a week in our house, sector 2 of the district Manual Martinez Manuel “Trapichito” in Guarenas. My family, mother, brother, sister, uncles, aunts, neighbours and friends took part in the Group enjoying playing Venezuelan folk music. My father shared the knowledge he had acquired through his studies with everyone in the group.
We played music from various regions of the country: including “parranda — fulia”, from Barlovento “golpes tambor” from Aragua Aragua, Carabobo, El Litoral Central, and from Calipso del Callao, “Gaita negra” from the South of Lake Maracaibo, “Tambor de la Vela” from Coro, “Polo” from Isla Margarita and the Eastern “Joropo”.
I travelled on many occasions, with my father, to Afro-Venezuelan communities situated in the interior of the country in order to research their musical talents en creativity. The culture of our African brethren still present in these communities in food, clothing, drums, songs, rhythms etc.. It was there that I managed to master many and varied complicated African rhythm structures.
After completing technical high school I decided to make music my profession.
I followed various courses at the Fundación Bigott cultural institution. They selected me to take part in the formation of the band “Vasallos del Sol”, which led to participation in international festivals and tours, such as the Festival of the seven islands in the Canary Islands (1991), a tour in Ponce and in Puerto Rico (1991), Saturce toured Cadíz, Ciudad Real and the Expo in Seville in Spain (1992) and the festival Latinoamericando to Milano, Italy in Viareggio and Verona (1998).
With my father I have worked on some folklore projects, including a percussion project for the prisoners, at the University or IUP Santiago Mariño,
Since 2000 I was one of the first musicians dedicated to developing the concepts “Baticonga” (playing multiple percussion instruments at a time) and I have shared this concept with various bands at Isla Margarita.
During my career as a musician, I continued learning musical genres such as salsa and other Latin American genres. Using this knowledge and experience in practice and using my network in the music industry I’ve grown and continue to grow both as a person and as a professional musician.
I came to Netherlands in 2006. and quickly became known as a freelance percussionist and have performed with many different groups and artists, such as La Vibora, Molote, La Misma Gente, El Barco, Saoco, Marck De Jong, Amigos, Salsabor, etc. I regularly play with Gerardo Rosales and I am currently a member of the Alberto Caicedo band – a rising star in the musical world. www.albertocaicedo.com. In 2011 I also founded my own group called “Ritmo Continuo”.
