“Joropo”, which means “party” in Venezuela, is perhaps the country’s most celebrated musical form. In the “llanera”, or plains, it is played hard and fast, and the dancing is inseparable from the music. It borrows bits and pieces from Venezuela’s indigenous people, the Afro-Latin diaspora, and the colonizing influences of the Spanish, whose sailors and minstrels arrived in the 17th century with fandangos, folías, peteneras, jotas and malagueñas.

Mafer Bandola, a female pioneer in the male-dominated musical tradition, brings joropo to Western Mass for the very first time with her Pipiris Band. The power-house bandola player of the pan-Lat-Am female group LADAMA resides permanently in New York City now, where she’s created a “portable community house” for Venezuelan expats through music and dance.

She’s looking forward to giving curious Collideristas a crash course in the philosophy, structure, and movement in the music prior to the band’s two sets in the Peacock Room.