Joropo is an ever-evolving style of folk music and dance found in Venezuela that fuses strains of music from the nation’s African and European past to form a distinctly Venezuelan música criolla (“creole” music). Colombian-Venezuelan musician Claudia Calderon’s website offers an introduction to joropo and provides excerpts of different styles of joropo music.
COUNTRY: Venezuela
KEY INSTRUMENTS: Bandola, Cuatro, Harp (arpa llanera), Maracas
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The Venezuelan harp, the “arpa llanera,” is common in the African/European-inspired waltz-like dance genre Joropo, but more specifically in llanero music, which is the music of Venezuelan cowboys who ride and ranch on the plains.
COUNTRY: Venezuela
KEY GENRES: Joropo, Llanero
A bandola is a stringed instrument with a pear-shaped body that’s a close cousin of the mandolin and is a staple instrument in the South American countries of Colombia and Venezuela. A mandolin player can convert that instruments to one of the three kinds of bandola, a “bandola oriental,” by manipulating the bridge and adding four nylon strings to the mandolin’s customary four. See the other two kinds of bandola in action: the four-stringed bandola llanera, and the bandola andina colombiana, which can have a variety of configurations of strings.
COUNTRY Colombia, Venezuela
KEY GENRES: Joropo
The cuatro is a small Caribbean and South American stringed instrument that descended from the Portuguese cavaquinho. “Cuatro” means “four” and most cuatros have four strings, though the instrument is adapting to its frequent use in several genres of music, from bawdy Puerto Rican guaracha to lively Trinidadian parang.
COUNTRY: Puerto Rico (U.S.), Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela
KEY GENRES: Guaracha, Joropo, Llanero, Parang, Plena
