VENEZUELA

BULENGA

NELSON ROJAS

Born in Caracas in 1953, Nelson Rojas, the eldest of four children, comes from what he describes as an ‘ordinary family’.
From the ages of ten to fifteen, Nelson played the cuatro with the traditional gaita zuliana group Cadafé (named after the local firm that sponsored it and paid for the musicians' uniforms). At such a young age, he had to obtain his parents' permission to join, and as the youngest member of the group he was always something of an attraction.
Since he was very young, Nelson has kept a sort of diary, in which he writes semi-fictional accounts of the various events in his life, in the form short stories and poems, which he sometimes sets to music.
At the age of seventeen, Nelson left Venezuela for Switzerland.
After graduating in sociology, Nelson spent two years in London (1980-1982) studying at the London Film School.
In 1982, he returned to Geneva, where he married Claire, a Swiss girl, who gave him a son, Arsemio, born in 1992. He worked at a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts, then at an old people's home. In 1985, he has been engaged by the jazz association AMR as co-ordinator of its music workshops.
And in 1985, Nelson formed his own group, Bulenga. Its formation varies according to Nelson's requirements and the musicians who come along. He describes Bulenga as an urban-music group. Its repertoire consists largely of personal compositions, with the occasional rearrangement of a classic salsa piece.
Bulenga's music differs from salsa, Nelson explains, in the importance of the texts and the refinement of its harmonic patterns, marked by the influence of jazz. It also has a typically Venezuelan flavour, with reminiscences of the Afro-Venezuelan rhythms of the gaita zuliana and of the Hispano-Venezuelan forms of música llanera (music of the grazing steppes of Venezuela), such as the vals, joropo and pasaje. Nelson admits his admiration for the singer and cuatro player Simón Díaz, and particularly the humour of his texts, which are full of double entendre, puns and hidden meanings: literary qualities that are often to be found in Nelson's own songs.
Nelson Rojas is the author and composer of all the pieces presented on this recording. When composing, he usually accompanies himself on the bass (rarely on the guitar). In the creative process, inspiration always takes precedence over the desire to compose, he says. Like a baby in gestation, a composition develops over a period of time: ‘A tune starts to go round and round in my head; then gradually the words come to me, with their melody; after that come the rhythms, and finally the harmonies fall into place. That's how I work, particularly with arrangements, but I never actually decide to compose.’

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