Conjunto Ingeniería Compiled by El Dragón Criollo & El Palmas (New LP)

Label: El Palmas Music

On this compilation, simply titled Conjunto Ingeniería, El Palmas Music have cherrypicked a glorious selection of tracks from across the group’s career, capturing all the creativity and youthful excitement that made them one of the first titans of Venezuela’s tropical music history.

As the 1950s drew to a close a group of students at Caracas’ Universidad Central de Venezuela caught the tropical music bug and decided to form an orchestra. With the majority of the students coming from the engineering faculty, they were duly christened Conjunto Ingeniería (The Engineering Group) and from the offset, they were ahead of the game. 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’d return with the latest Latin big band sounds: Tito Puente, Machito, they heard it first.