The Bululú Project is a musical fusion that might be dubbed 'world jazz,' incorporating some of the variegated musical styles of a multi-ethnic society. An alchemical blend of Afro-Caribbean rhythms and homegrown anarchy, it is a reflection of the persisting social chaos in Venezuela, and of life in the pressure cooker caraqueño society has become.

Composer Gilberto Simoza and producer Bartolomé Duijsens embarked on The Bululú Project together, with Simoza’s group Kontambor as its nucleus. As gifted musicians like Betzayda Machado, Violeta Aleman and Engelberth Sánchez united with long time members Ramón Grillet, Livio Arias and Gregory Medina, a new group with its own identity emerged: Caracas Kontambor, the tomtoms drumming out their mission. A 'creative noise,' engaged and enraged, riotous, metropolitan, cosmopolitan.

Tracklist

1. Amores de la Calle
2. Comadre Juana
3. El Cielo Pa'Ti
4. Bululú
5. Barlovento
6. Guaicaipuro al Panteón
7. Bolívar Valseando
8. Alma Venezolana
9. Yambambo
10. San Francisco
11. Cecilia Baila Calipso
12. Una Sola Bandera
13. Musíu Música

Bululú means noisy disorder, a carnivalesque abandon, from a society whose poetic spirit and contemporary social turmoil infuse this sweeping aural revelation. An inventive, self-styled “world-jazz” combo, led by composer-arranger, keyboardist, cuatro player and singer Gilberto Simoza, who unfurls a politically conscious brew of Venezuelan folk and calypso-techno idioms, classical strains, and keen vocal and percussive influences from the country’s long-marginalised, African-descent population. Singer Betzayda Machado especially shines on a most intriguing CD, proof positive that there is life after salsa pop in a cacophonous pan-Caribbean milieu."

Michael Stone, fROOTS jan-feb 2004