Duluc — José Duluc, born 6 September 1958 in Higüey — is a Dominican composer, folkloric percussionist and dancer, and one of the country’s most persistent researchers of its Afro-Dominican rhythms.

From the Ballet Folklórico to «Transporte Urbano»

He began formal music study at eleven in his native Higüey and spent 1980 to 1984 as a dancer with the Ballet Folklórico of the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. In 1982 he joined Luis “Terror” Días’s «Transporte Urbano» — alongside Juan Francisco Ordóñez on guitar — on percussion, in the band widely credited with starting Dominican rock by building it out of merengue, mangulina, salve and other native rhythms rather than importing it.

Songs that outgrew him

As a composer he has written past his own performances more than through them. «La Ciguapa», recorded by Chichi Peralta, went gold and platinum; «Carnaval para gozar», first sung with Maridalia Hernández, was the official Dominican Carnival theme from 1997 to 1999 and was recorded again by Sergio Vargas; «Pega’o de qué» went to «Diómedes y el Grupo Mío», and «El Caminante», which he recorded himself for «Música Raíz, Vol. 1», later turned up on the compilation «Música negra in the Americas».

His own groups

He founded and led «Palemba», «Ga’Caribe» and «Domini-Can» — with which he released the albums «Pánico» and «A quién le creo» — and, more recently, «Los Guerreros del Fuego», whose electric-palo hit «El Animal» became a fixture of Santo Domingo’s nightclubs. Along the way he has catalogued more than fifty rhythms drawn from groups such as «El Combo de Higüey» and his own Domini-Can, the research side of a career spent as much in the field as on stage.

On the road

His music has traveled to the Festival Mundial de la Juventud in Moscow (1985), the Festival de Varadero in Havana (1987), Fenétre au Sud in Cergy, France (1996), the Festival Caribeño de Veracruz (1997), the Festival Washoi in Japan (2000) and the SOB club in New York (2005).

Legacy

Well past four decades in music, Duluc still leads «Los Guerreros del Fuego» and keeps working, by his own description, from the belief that the country’s roots survive in the everyday — the same conviction that has run through every group, every song and every rhythm he has chased since he first picked up an instrument in Higüey.