‘Latingrass’ Duo Larry & Joe Are Creating a New Folk Sound

interviewed by Madeleine Brand for KCRW’s Press Play (NPR)
written by Danielle Chiriguayo for KCRW.com
7.24.23

The new album “Nuevo South Train” is a fusion of Venezuelan and Appalachian folk music by the band Larry & Joe. They call their style “Latingrass.” 

The duo consists of Larry Bellorín, a multi-instrumentalist from Venezuela who came to the U.S. in 2017, and Joe Troop, a musician from North Carolina. The two met in North Carolina as the COVID pandemic was letting up and began making music together. They’re now touring the country. 

Troop first learned about Bellorín and his music in North Carolina, when he was working with asylum-seeking migrants. Troop had just returned from a decade in Buenos Aires, while Bellorín had recently fled his home country.

“We had to leave because of the debacle that the [Hugo] Chavez and [Nicolás] Maduro governments had created. I couldn’t sustain my musical career in that economy,” Bellorín explains. “In my town, I had a musica llanera school, which I had to close in 2012.” 

When he first arrived in the U.S., Bellorín was unable to continue as a full-time musician and instead worked on a construction site. 

Troop says linking with his musical partner was a “matter of destiny” when they met at a residency in Durham: “He had a very comfortable middle-class life as a musician and as an educator in Venezuela, but North Carolina was quite the wake-up call. He sustained a lot of work-related injuries and was very depressed by the whole ordeal, but also resigned to never being a musician again.”

Troop continues, “Both of us were down in the dumps. The pandemic had destroyed my operation, and I was taking any work I could find, and Larry was resigned to never [going] back to music. And so we met at this moment in both of our lives — it was just the biggest blessing.”

Troop describes Larry as an encyclopedia of different Latin American folk traditions.

“His specialty is … music shared between Venezuela and Colombia,” Troop says. “He also plays salsa on bass. He plays joropo oriental from his native Eastern Venezuela. He is a consummate folk musician in every way of the folk traditions of Latin America.”

Bellorín started his musical journey at the cultural center in his hometown of Punta de Mata, where he studied under a professor named Jose Manuel Garcia. Within weeks, as he describes it, he learned how to play stringed instruments, including mandolin, guitar, and the [c]uatro. 

Central to their music-making are the banjo and the arpa llanera, a Venezuelan 33-stringed harp, which Bellorín plays with his fingernails. While it may seem like an unorthodox marriage, Troop says the duo just works.

“We experimented with banjo and harp, thinking, ‘This will be a fun kind of novelty.’ And then they just seem to fold into each other in this beautiful way. … You wouldn't think they would mesh well, but this particular harp, and this particular banjo — the Venezuelan harp and the Appalachian bluegrass banjo — seem to have been meant for each other. And it was just a fortunate coincidence.” 

“Caballo Viejo” (old horse) is featured on their new album. It’s a cover of a traditional 1980 Venezuelan song written by Simón Díaz. The song won a Latin Grammy Award. 

“It's about the idea of finding, even at old age, love. ‘Don't count out an old horse, they might have a trick up their sleeve still’ is the message. It's [about how] the human spirit can be vibrant, even in old age.”

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