Folk and Fusion: Larry and Joe bring music without borders to the Carolina Theatre
Written by Katei Cranford for Yes! Weekly
10.19.22
All aboard the “Nuevo South Train,” Larry & Joe are bringing their Appalachian-Venezuelan fusion to TEDxGREENSBORO at the Van Dyke Performance Space on November 3; and for a show of their own at the Carolina Theatre on November 4.
Bounded by their love and talent for string music of their respective folk traditions, Larry & Joe is the official pairing of the GRAMMY-nominated Winston-native Joe Troop and Venezuelan llanera star turned asylum-seeking migrant, Larry Bellorín.
"We are not to be confused with the pizzeria in Newark, New Jersey", Troop insisted, with a pull of the leg and pluck of the strings — expressing the group’s lighthearted nature that almost hides the heavy-trodden roads they’ve experienced. Roads not unfamiliar to their sonic home bases: Troops in the banjoed bluegrass of the Appalachian mountains and Bellorín's in the harp-filled waltz of llanera growing up in Monagas, Venezuela.
An array and arrangement of strings tie the two together — as people and musicians, their mission is to show that music has no borders. With a set featuring harp, banjo, cuatro, fiddle, guitar, maracas, and “whatever else they decide to throw in the van,” Larry & Joe fuse together a “distinct blend of their musical inheritances and traditions as well as storytelling about the ways that music and social movements coalesce.”
And while Bellorín is pretty sure this is the first time llanera music has been played on a banjo, it’s not exactly Troops first rodeo in a sort of “latingrass” — having earned a GRAMMY nomination for his work in Che Apalache. "I love the fact that the Appalachian and Llaneran string bands are coming together," Troop said. "It’s the coolest thing in the world to me. Because they’re two music traditions that have the same spirit. The same spiritual foundation somehow and the same freedom to keep expanding musically. It’s music from the Americas — and the Americas don’t have a clear identity. It’s a big melting pot at this point."
The fusion proves a point the pair finds invaluable: "music is the universal language," Bellorín said. "Our instruments understand each other without uttering a single word. We have an inclusive group where all folklore traditions can come together and make music."
"Getting technical, we’re both multi-instrumentalists and seasoned veterans of our folk music traditions, and are respected in our home traditions," Troop explained. "Now when we bring our styles together, we need to figure out ways to fuse them: metric modulations, changing swing, accommodating different rhythmic and harmonic structures to co-exist." Finding fun in that challenge, Joe reflects on his world of folk — first unfolded as a teenager at a diner in Deep Gap. "My brother took me to see Doc Watson, and I was immediately hooked. My folk tradition has given me everything, he said. And now, with Larry, I get to bring my life’s work in communion with that of a llanero musician. Appalachian folk music and música llanera are like old friends, soul mates who finally got to meet in person.”
Considering themselves musical soul brothers, their styles are bridged from paths of lives blown apart, with a steady (albeit uncertain) focus on a life of music. For Troop, the pandemic threw his world into upheaval. Having spent 10 years living in Buenos Aires, where he’d formed Che Apalache, Troop found himself on the precipice of the shutdown. On the heels of their 2019 GRAMMY nomination for "Rearrange My Heart," (Che Apalache’s sophomore album produced by Béla Fleck) the group’s major 2020 tour was suddenly canceled. The quartet split to their homes--one in Mexico, two to Argentina. Joe found himself stranded in the U.S..
“The pandemic ruined my band’s operation, and I had to start over,” he noted — recalling his upbringing: playing bluegrass in Winston-Salem UNC-Chapel Hill and studying abroad in Spain (igniting his interest in Latin music.) After college, he traveled around, briefly living in Japan, before spending a decade teaching Appalachian string music in Argentina.
Back in the states, Troop became something of a wanderer: briefly living in a cabin in Danbury and his van, before heading out west to California and Washington. Then a migrant shelter in Mexico and a theater company in Ohio. “I was searching, bouncing around,” he explained. “I didn’t have a home. I left the house I was renting during the first part of the pandemic and I was hoping I would find my next move.”
“It’s just my nature. I was born to ramble, it’s in my bones. Not everyone understands this life, but they don’t have to,” he continued, referencing the adage, “‘he who travels learns.’ I fully believe that.”
Taking in lessons from the world, with an eye to act on them here at home, Joe released his 2021 solo album, “Borrowed Time," featuring work with Béla Fleck, Tim O’Brien, Abigail Washburn, and Charlie Hunter. "It was my homecoming," Troop explained. “It marks the time between Che Apalache and this new duo being in focus."
An album of solidarity with the marginalized, "The Rise of Dreama Caldwell," references the Alamance County activist pushing to reform North Carolina’s cash bail system. "Hermano Migrante," written before they met, struck a chord for Bellorín — driving home how their music offers a message for basic human rights — and the beauty of sharing space and practice with other cultures.
Together, that drive ties into the “Nuevo South,” a descriptor for the ways immigrant communities have shaped the contemporary southern landscape — and ways elements of those cultures have been woven into the landscape all along. And Troop is thrilled to be in a pair showcasing that concept in action. “I lived 14 years outside of the US, but I’m glad to be back home in NC,” he said. “I decided to move to Durham after meeting Larry — because of this duo.”
“I was flailing about, waiting for some divine connection to happen,” Troop continued, recalling his work prior to the fateful show where they first met. “And then Larry walked right in that door, and from the first moment, I realized that I had it again.”
Larry & Joe bloomed from a residency Troop booked at the Fruit in Durham, during which Bellorín was invited to play in late December of 2021. "I remember Joe telling me that I was like a blessing to him," Bellorín recalled. "He didn’t think he was going to be exposed to the kind of music that would make him fall in love and get fired up about a new folk tradition for the long haul." Likewise pointing to the divine, "Joe had lost his foundation in Che Apalache and I was also coming out of having my band, Son Latinos — ending up with nothing to do in the pandemic as well. There was too much similarity between our situations."
Bellorín’s road into the group is paved with a story worthy of a blockbuster biopic. At six years old, he was shining shoes in Venezuela — singing as he worked — attracting the ear of administrators at a premier music school. Starting on the cuatro guitar, he was earning a living by age 11, adding bass, mandolin, and maracas to his repertoire. He began apprenticing under llanera harpist Urbino Ruiz. In 1999, they performed with GRAMMY-winner, Reynaldo Armas at the Punta de Mata’s Parque Ferial.
"Working as a touring artist, Bellorín and his wife would ultimately open Casa Vieja, the first officially recognized llanera music school in his hometown, where they’d teach nearly 500 students and launch a number of music festivals, including the Garza de Oro. "It’s one of the things that I’m most proud of,” Bellorín noted.
In 2016, the Venezuelan migration crisis forced Bellorín into exile, seeking asylum in the United States; and landing in Raleigh with about $30 in his pocket while working construction jobs to make ends meet.
"Music has been the greatest relief and stabilizer in all of the difficult situations," Bellorín said. A professional musician for the majority of his life, "I’ve had to sacrifice my music for my life, and not work as a musician in order to support my family," he added. "But even in situations like doing construction work even when I was risking the health of my hands for those purposes — music has always been there for me. Music has been my life. I haven’t lived without music, but it’s totally difficult to have a full-time job and then make music afterward. You have to have a lot of musical and spiritual strength and a lot of love and passion."
“You get home, tired after work but even still wanting to do a rehearsal,” he continued, “and after every rehearsal, you see the progress made as a result of sacrifice — especially after having worked construction — is beautiful and gratifying.”
Since moving to the U.S., Bellorín has built his reputation as an in-demand player in a handful of salsa, merengue, and Cumbia bands; and founded the Caribbean music band, Son Latinos– but, as with Joe’s music, the shuddering impact of the pandemic was unavoidable.
"And that’s when the call came in from Joe," Bellorín said. "I was working construction and had no expectations. But once I heard the harp and banjo together, it was unlike anything I’d ever made or heard before. And it didn’t just catch my ears, but it also caught the audience’s ears."
Troop agreed. “Our connection was immediate,” he said. “I was pretty lost before I met Larry and [manager/Fruit wrangler] Kayla last December. I was flailing around, waiting for a sign. And that sign came out of the residency.”
“Our manager Kayla [Oelhafen] is our angel,” Troop continued, praising the administrative efforts of Oelhafen (and writer Lindsey Terrell) that have helped cover the business and social media ends — allowing Larry & Joe full creative focus. “We’ve been working as hard as we can to launch quickly. It’s just us, our small team, and the love from the fans we’ve already made. They put wind in our sails.”
And it’s been a blustery year. The pair have toured the eastern part of the country — at venues and Folk Festivals — they’ve recently launched a video series and are about to release their debut record. Offstage, they host workshops in partnership with the United Arts Council’s Artists in Schools program and the Durham Arts Council’s Creative Arts in Public & Private Schools. And Larry is in the process of building a harp luthiery.
For the video series, Larry & Joe returned to where it began: the Fruit in Durham. The first release features the song, “Gabanjo,” which offers a fresh take on a classic Venezuelan form. On the flip, their set is notorious for a maraca-laden rendition of the old-time favorite made popular by artists like Flatt & Scruggs and Buck Owens.
Laying down the wax, their debut album “Nuevo South Train,” is due by year’s end. “We’re so excited for people to hear this album in December that we can barely contain ourselves,” Troop said. With the mastered tracks returned ten months to the day after meeting, Larry & Joe reflect on the mysterious work of the divine (and the handiwork of area musicians).
“I think the pressure that we felt made us dig really, really deep at the moment, as we were making the album,” Troop said. Produced by Charlie Hunter, that pressure was eased in part thanks to the craft of those involved, including Afro-Cuban percussion from Brevan Hampden on “Larry’s Cachapa,” or the pedal steel DaShawn Hickman brings onboard. And just as music knows no borders, neither does the album — which features bass recorded from Nelson Echandía down in Venezuela.
“The music was asking for more, and that’s when we made spontaneous decisions to add other instruments and get guest musicians,” Troop said. “DaShawn really brought something magic to the album. The first time the three of us had ever played music was when we hit ‘record.’ Three different musical traditions, for the first time. Something magic happened.”
Larry & Joe extend that magic to Hunter in the producer chair. “Working with Charlie was the most incredible mentee experience I’ve ever had,” Troop noted. “He reshaped my rhythmic concept and revolutionized my approach to banjo, and shaped our compositions without imposing anything himself. He just helped us be the best versions of ourselves, somehow. I think he’s magic”.
Bellorín agreed. "Working with Charlie was a very different and unique experience," he said. "I was able to see through a person that isn’t from my country — that doesn’t know about my folk tradition — I was able to watch him understand our musical ideas. He was able to just get it, understand it, and help us shape our compositions by taking elements out and rearranging them. He worked with what we had, but helped us restructure it into something better."
"It was an album made in record time no pun intended and we both felt the severe lack of time we had to prepare. We were fighting against it," Bellorín continued. "It’ll be the first in history to weave together the Llanera and Appalachian instruments."
Serving as a tangible example of the work they’re weaving, the album highlights the universal language of music in its production and its offering — with neither limited to the wax on a record for Larry & Joe — as people or as a duo.
"I know we look like twins, but we’re not the same," Bellorín joked. "Don’t get confused with who’s who." While the pair vary in appearance, they offer an interesting level of similarities for symbiosis — perhaps best demonstrated in their workshops and educational programming. "Our educational program is very unique because even though we’re from distinct nationalities, we have one and only one goal as educators: to teach about our folk music traditions."
With the two sharing independent backgrounds as music educators, the roles become cyclical. “We both recognize that the other is good at their folk tradition,” Troop explained. “We want to make sure that it’s going both ways, that we’re equally able to bring our bag of tricks to the other and share our resources and hope something new comes along.”
Both concerts and workshops are bi-lingual experiences in both English and Spanish, though neither Larry & Joe considers language the greatest barrier in their pursuit. “Teaching passionately and showing that we love all folk traditions of the world, children intuitively understand what that implies — and what that says beyond music,” Troop noted. “You don’t have to tell children, you just have to show them — and they’ll understand that not only music is universal, but that humanity is universal. Music is the perfect way to show them.”
“Both Larry and I know our musical history,” Troop continued. “We have close relationships with our mentors and our students. We both see ourselves as part of a continuum. And viewing ourselves in this way makes the musical process feel timeless, ageless. We’re just another couple of human beings bringing our own little contributions to the great river of music.”
And on that river, Larry & Joe hope their work generates a flow of cross-cultural ideas. "People are seeing through our work that folk traditions can come together and take on their own color, even without changing anything about either of them," Bellorín said. "They can come together on one single path and, in the process, we’re bringing instruments from distinct folklore traditions together, causing an influence in people from both of our countries. There’s a switch that’s being flipped. They’re hearing new folklore traditions and falling in love with them."
Within that approach, widening the rivers of access remains key. While language isn’t necessarily a barrier — money and time certainly are, aspects which they address through measures like “pay-what-you-can” ticketing whenever available. "It’s a brilliant idea because it doesn’t give any social class identity to our audience," Bellorín said. Cementing principles, "it’s our way of challenging the capitalist system that so clearly failed us, Troop noted. It evens out in the end people who can pay more, pay more. People who can’t pay don’t pay. It works out the same for us in the end."
And it’s working. “We’ve seen the audience growing in numbers and also in representation,” Troop said. “People from many different cultures, but particularly lovers of Latin American folk music and Appalachian folk music. They’re coming into the same space. They’re people that share a common interest, like us: the connectedness of these folk traditions. We want to share space. We want to experience collective joy and cry together for the systems that divide us. And our tears and laughter will break those systems.”
Bellorín likens the experience to finding an explosion of feelings. "We have them very relaxed in the clouds and then we start to come down on them with euphoria. Song, dance, and everything changes immediately. People cheer, people sing without even knowing the language. Even one little syllable aye and you can see the happiness in the people that they experience at the moment that we’re on stage. It’s magic."
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