Joropo Music from the Plains of Colombia

Música Llanera is the music of the vast open expanses of the Colombian plains around the Orinoco River, up in the north-east of South America. It's traditionally an area of cattle ranches but, since the 1970s, it has been transformed by petroleum companies, for this is now one of the main oil-producing regions of the country. Yet the old rural music lives on, thanks to bands like Cimarrón, a nine-piece acoustic (mostly) outfit who play songs of the plains with a furiously energetic dance style that matches Latin influences with reminders of Colombia's Spanish colonial past.

Founded back in the mid-80s by harpist Carlos Rojas, the band matches his often percussive playing on a large and imposing harp with bandola, four-stringed cuatro, bass guitar and added percussion from the maracas or box-like cajón. There are European influences here, such as the flurries and furious strumming of flamenco, but these are mixed with rhythms and structures that are reminders of the African slaves who were transported to Colombia. There are sturdy instrumental pieces like ‘Cimarroneando’, in which the different band members take solo spots, and improvised sections such as ‘Zumbaquezumba Tramao’, in which some instruments repeat musical phrases while others are free to improvise, bringing a jazz influence to the mix.

The band features two singers. There's Luis Eduardo Moreno, otherwise known as ‘El Gallito Cantaclaro’ (The Clear-Singing Cock), whose style is mostly loud and exuberant, but who calms down slightly for the more thoughtful ‘Mi Llano Ya No Es El Mismo’ (My Plains are no Longer the Same), which laments the arrival of the oil companies. Then there's Ana Veydo, who looks like a cowgirl in her hat, boots and jeans, and who switches from full-tilt dance songs to ‘Tierra Negra’, a powerful and evocative song of longing for the plains. Though they should ideally be experienced in a dance hall out in a Colombian cattle town, they sounded great at London's Union Chapel last year. Let's hope they tour here again soon.