Toro Ensamble is founded by Marco Toro Bernal, drummer of Laberinto.

He got his first drum kit on his ninth birthday, and from then on he never stopped drumming, learning all about the possibilities and intricacies of his instruments, and experimenting with other percussion instruments. At age 16, he started his first rock band, and in 1989 he founded Laberinto with some friends from Guarenas, a suburb east of Caracas. In 1992, these “latin metal rockers” made the jump to the Old World, finding a new home in Amsterdam. This most hospitable and liberal town of Europe offered them the greatest possible musical and artistic freedom, and from this new base they started to tour and created six albums (The first appeared in 1995, and the most recent release, Decada, celebrates their first decade in Europe). To get more gigs, they also started a Santana-cover band called Santanico. During 1997 and 1998, Laberinto made a hugely successful and extensive tour through Europe, in order to promote their albums Priority and Freakeao. By this time, Laberinto had achieved a certain notorierity in Venezuela and by now they are revered there as rock legends who have suffered to realize their musical dreams and ambitions in the outside world. And although Laberinto is his `spiritual home,´ Marco never lost his rootedness in Venezuelan popular musical culture. This is a very rich and variegated musical heritage, in which Pan-Latin and Afro-Venezuelan rhythmic patterns predominate, at least in the urban environment from which Marco and his band members emerged. As a testimony to this multilayered heritage, he plays a wide variety of percussion instruments on this record, not just drums, but also timbales, congas, bongos, and cowbell, and also typical Afro-Venezuelan instruments, like the cumaco, culo e' puya, the drum of San Millán, the tambora de gaita, the palitos (sticks used to beat on the sides of the wooden body of the drum), the maracas and the guiro and the guira —one a gourd scraper, and the other a metal scraper — which play an essential role in Venezuelan music in general. In and folk music, integrating these with the new soundscape of the global village.
The first presentations of Marco´s Toro Ensamble were highly successful events, and as the proof of the 'pudding' is in the eating: listen to this record and you’ll be a part of the labirhythmic world of Marco Toro, intrigued by where he comes from and unable to resist following his future career! Marco Toro—`Toro´ is Spanish for `bull´—and Merusa Records will let this record convince you of his manifold talents. Remember, you have been warned: A bull is loose in the Latin Quarter!time, in the liberal melting pot of Amsterdam, the city of flower-power, provo, squats, and creative freedom, Marco grew into an all-round musician and music producer, much in demand by his colleagues. He worked with a long list of well-known musicians and bands, his latest project being a fusion of Laberinto with Osdorp Posse, a rap-band hugely popular in the Low Countries (They have toured together since May of 2004). And as he matured as a professional, he also embarked on a solo project: The Toro Ensamble, founded in 2004, and of which this CD —Barrio Latino—is the enticing and exciting result. Here he leaves the circumscribed world of metalatino, and returns in part to the salsa brava of his youth and to Venezuelan popular Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.