Jose Duque recalls his Venezuelan heritage on new CD

The cover of Jose Duque’s new CD, “Far Away,” depicts a split image of Portsmouth’s North Church steeple hovering over a blurred panoramic of the drummer’s native city of Caracas.

As implied, the music on “Far Away” bridges the gap between the very different musical environments of New England and Duque’s home country of Venezuela. Upbeat Latin rhythms recall the drummer’s South American roots, while an assemblage of local musicians and odd time signatures bring a unique edge to the tunes.

The result is an album with a richness of culture and emotion that surprises even the artist, who wrote the songs in a spirit of longing for home. 

“I haven’t seen my mom in close to six years,” Duque said in a recent interview. “It’s hard to be far away from (family). But also if I’m away from here I feel bad, and that’s why the cover has that superimposition of two places.”

Duque, who teaches at the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center, began playing drums in Caracas when he was 12 years old. Unable to afford a set, he bought a pair of drumsticks and spent one or two years driving his parents crazy by pounding rhythms on couch cushions and pillows.

Finally convinced that the destruction of the furniture would not stop, Duque’s father consented to buy him a drum set. The young musician taught himself how to play, mimicking his favorite rock records, but did not take a formal lesson until after high school.

Duque cultivated his passion in an area with diverse musical influences. Positioned on the northern tip of Venezuela, Caracas imports musical flavors from the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.

Duque himself grew up listening primarily to rock bands from the U.S. and Britain. In the 1970s, he immersed himself in the British progressive rock movement and was especially fascinated by Yes, whose drummer at the time, Bill Bruford, became a fixture of his listening habits.

Bruford later played with King Crimson before starting his own jazz band. The idea of a drummer as a bandleader and songwriter was a liberating concept for Duque, who was accustomed to keeping the beat with bands in Caracas.

“He became a really good source of inspiration,” Duque said of Bruford. “I was like, ‘Wow, the drummer is actually writing the music. How can that be?’”

Eager to challenge himself and improve as a musician, Duque veered away from his rock roots and began studying jazz. As his passion for music expanded, he made the life-altering decision to drop out of college, where he was studying psychology. His father did not approve of the decision.

“Oh, it was pretty bad. He didn’t talk to me for, like, two or three months or something like that,” Duque said.

But he pressed forward, first studying at a small music school in Venezuela and then applying to Berklee College of Music in Boston. He graduated in 1997 and made his way north to Portsmouth, where he first joined a Latin jazz group called Cora-Son. He later formed the Zumbao Trio in 1999 (now Zumba Tres) and has worked with a number of area musicians, including T.J. Wheeler and Randy Armstrong.

“Far Away” features a vastly different sound than the previous Zumba Tres release, 2004’s “Gathering in Blue.” The new CD is more Latin, for one thing, and Duque largely attributes the change to his fluctuating moods.

A drummer struggling to succeed thousands of miles from his home, Duque said he recorded “Gathering in Blue” at a time when he was feeling angry, but surprised himself by creating a smooth and melodic album. This time, he approached the songwriting process feeling sad and nostalgic. The peppy rhythms that resulted left him baffled.

“This album I was definitely feeling homesick, feeling sad, and the actual music that came out is really, really, upbeat music, so it’s really funny,” he said. “I will have to think of different moods and see what comes out,” he added with a laugh.

The new CD also features an entirely different lineup of instrumentalists from the previous release, with Dan Shure on piano and keyboards, Nate Therrien on acoustic bass and Phil Sargent on guitar.

The group helped bring to life six compositions, and the drummer was invigorated to discover that the songs he wrote sounded as good in the studio as they did in his head.

“It takes forever sometimes for me to write,” Duque said. “As much as I like to write music, it is really, really painful for me to do.”

The grueling process is referenced in the title of one of the CD’s tracks, “One Year Later,” which borrows heavily from chord sections written by Bruford. Duque came up with the basic melody while studying at Berklee, but it took him a full year to fill in the chord sections and round out the song.

“I start with a simple idea,” Duque said of the songwriting process. He then envisions the role of each instrument and begins the meticulous process of writing out sheet music. If the song winds up sounding the way he wanted it to sound, all the effort is worthwhile. 

“That’s the best feeling of all: realizing that you were not that wrong, but you actually wrote the thing. That is just a great feeling,” he said.

Throughout the CD, Shure garnishes bouncy Latin licks with rapid splashes of notes that evoke visions of salsa dancers twirling in red dresses. The piano complements the complex meters and wildly busy rhythms created by Duque, who often sounds like he is simultaneously playing three or four drum sets instead of just one.

In the title track, Duque showcases his proficiency with Spanish flamenco rhythms, a notoriously challenging style with uncommon accents, shifting tempos and difficult time measures. He played with a flamenco dance group at Berklee and occasionally sits in with Toronto-based flamenco guitar player James Cohen.

The final studio track on the CD, “El Gato Enmo—Chill Out,” branches out in a new direction, incorporating a more danceable techno style toward the end. Duque said he has been following the work of progressive jazz groups in Scandinavian countries, where driving techno beats and electric rhythms are bringing the music back to its dance-happy roots of the early 20th century.

“I think it’s the perfect direction of where jazz should go, because essentially jazz was a dance music when it started in the States,” he said.

The new CD closes with three live tracks recorded last winter at The Press Room in Portsmouth. Duque originally planned to do the entire album live, he said, but a computer glitch erased most of the recording and forced him into Waterway Production Studios in Dover, where he put the CD together this summer.

Now 38, Duque lives in a modest rental in Rye. Somewhat frustrated by what he views as a deficient patronage of the arts in New England, he is not sure whether his stay in the area will be permanent. He has not been home to Venezuela in five years and wants to travel with his band, ideally to play in jazz clubs and festivals in Europe. He hopes to find a distributor for the CD, which will help facilitate touring possibilities.

Duque feels that too many musicians in New England cling to a gloomy singer/songwriter style of folk that has defined the Seacoast music scene for more than a century. While there are many talented musicians in Portsmouth, he cannot relate to the melancholy, soft-core music that often prevails.

But Duque is proud to have achieved his own distinct style, and he continues on a mission to improve himself and expand his horizons.

“I try to approach music in a very Eastern philosophy way,” he said. “The way you go about it is to work and work and work, and your goal to reach that ultimate point of achievement is always moving on. It’s like a spiritual quest to find Nirvana, whatever that may be.”