On 28 January 2002, I received an email from Mp3.com. They had a number of artists in their promotional list. One of them was Orlando "El Cholo" Valderrama. This used to be a link to Cholo's web page on mp3.com but that service has been cancelled. There is a free/pay service on Live365 called Quitapesares Stero that plays music from the Llano. Was I surprised, the broadcaster is Cholo. Cholo's music has a unique sound because it is of a style common to the Llano region of South America. The main muscial sounds are from an "arpa", "quatro", "maracas", and others. If you don't have a clue what they are and I didn't and found a site called Llanera.com. The website has been completely redone. Most of my links no longer work and I haven't reworked this page. The Llanera.com site has a section on each of the "Cantautores Llaneros". I cannot link to the artist, so, you have to go to their música page and then choose the artist. There are a number of songs by each artist and you have a cross section the Llanero folklore artists that you can listen to.
I was having problems getting RealPlayer to work and was choosing several artists at random from the music list. One of the first artists in the alphabetical list is "Yohana Bernal". I did a double take when I got her music to play because she looks like a younger Jaci Velasquez. Another form of intertainment is the dance called the Joropo. The Joropo has a page of its own. I can imagine a pretty señorita twirling her skirt with the simple movement and there must be more to it. Since we are talking about a region, you would expect some new words to be introduced and they have a diccionario Llanero (Llanero dictionary) to help you with the regional words that you will find to be new.
I was listening to Quitapesares Stero while I was in another room looking at computer hardware and heard a voice that I really liked. It was like hearing Shakira on Exitos de Onda Max and having to walk into the tv room to see who was singing. This time, the singer was Fabiana Ochoa. I tend to prefer woman singers that sing at a lower tone. Fabiana fits this characteristic. If you click the link, you will go to www.venezuelacoplasyleyendas.com where there is information on a number of artists. Another artist that played with an almost angelic sounding voice was Nanaelle from her album Sol de oriente. I haven't found any real link to her. She really didn't sound like your typical Llanera music.
A new web site that I visited as a link from Chollo´s web site was about the "la Comunidad de Toros Coleados en Venezuela". I grew up on a farm and a rodeo was a common summer time entertainment. I thought that grabbing a scared bull by the horns and throwing it bordered on insanity. I tried to ride a calf but was always thrown off in seconds. So, some one that can stay on the back of an animal for 8 seconds or throw the animal using its horns has my awe. Then, I see how they entertain themselves in the Llano, and it raises the notch a little bit. It is called "El Coleo". You have to see images of this scared animal being pursued by a cowboy on a horse. This time the animal is going to be grabbed by the tail and have things done to it. The points are based on what you do. From the expression of the bull, if it could say "¡Santa mierda!", it would. You have to visit Polcan.edu.co and then follow "Cultura y torismo" and finally choose Coleo. There, you can see how they score the coleo. To lean over and pass a bull's tail behind a leg using both hands while on the run borders on insanity. Anyone that can do it has my awe. To see how the points are arranged you have to visit the English version. I like the images on the Spanish version best. To get to the English, you choose "Pagina principal" and then English and finally "Welcome to ...". Next, you choose Culture and Tourism and then Coleo. You can also read about the Coleo on Cholo's site and the Llanera.com. I just never saw the way points were awarded as completely on the other sites.
There are the traditional links to "otros artistas" and they are Rummy Olivo and Reynaldo Armas. When you like an artist, you are always interested in who they want you to visit. Olivo´s web site is being developed and the undefined pages are disappearing. The webmaster uses Apache and Apache creates a file called "httpd-error.log". If you want to find out what is wrong with your site, you pay attention to the error log. There should be a number of entries in Olivo´s error log. You also have to filter some of the error messages. One of the search engines keeps trying to find (Empty Reference) on my site and the bad link was fixed 6 months ago. What I also find interesting is that www.rummyolivo.com is running Red Hat Linux and Apache 1.3.27. I hadn't been through here for awhile and I went to check it out. First of all, 1.3.27 is really, really old. Well, now it was this reference that was really out of date because they are now running Debian and Apache-2.0.54. I also use 2.0.54 on my informal web site. If they aren't going to use FreeBSD, Linux is a good choice to my way of thinking <smile>.
The site about Armas is more traditional and has the typical information about an entertainer. I did a check of Armas' site and it is still out of date. It hasn't been updated since 2003 and that makes it susceptible to hackers such as the ones that hacked into Llanera.com. Olivo´s site could very easily have too much detail but the background is typically very beautiful and has butterflies flying around. I will be back to see how it develops. I have watched a number of caterpillers (orugas) develop into mariposas. The name for a monarch butterfly is a mariposa but it is also the generic name for butterflies. The monarch butterfly produces a beautiful chrysalis (crisálida). Don't worry if you don't know what a chrysalis is because I couldn't spell cocoon, which is the name most of us know it by.
The Llanera.com has music from a number of cantautores (singers). There are two pages of songs by various cantantes. The page is titled "Cantautores Llaneros". They have reduced the number of performers and made it more difficult for English speakers to navigate. For right now, you only have to know that "seguiente" will advance you and último is the last page. Primero is the 1st page and anterior will back you up. For a section with only 2 pages, the controls are really overkill. I don´t look at it that way but look at it as developing a template that provides for future changes. If a cantautore has a web page, you are provided a link to it. They provide samples of the singers music but it isn't obvious on how to see them. For example, when you run your mouse over "Música Llanera", you only see the choices "Cantautores and Instrumentos". However, the menu item "Música Llanera" is also a link that you may have missed seeing. So, if you want to listen to the performers, you can click "Real Audio symbol for each performer" and a multi-page list of music will show up. I have provided a link to it but if this menu item has a slightly strange behaviour to my way of thinking, there may be others.
I received an email from a fan of "Música Llanera" and she told me that Elda Nair Florez is more popular in Venezuela than Cholo. Señora Flórez has 3 songs on "Música Llanera". I have a hard time playing them right now because I have 2 machines setup to deal with the Mp3 form of music and "Real Audio Plus" simply dies when I click it. Both of these computers are the ones I use to connect to the Internet. So, I can play Real Audio Media (*.ram) if I download it; however, Llanera.com only produces a link to the music. If you use Google to search for the exact phrase "elda florez", you only see 5 links. So, we have another popular folk artist that is almost invisible on the Internet. The search did provide a link about "Maestro Luis Fernando Léon".
If you are wondering why I specify Google, it is because they fully index my web sites every month. I am a home user and can not stream audio. So, if you are a fan of "música llanera" and have a favorite artist with a web page that isn't in the search engines, let me know. Google doesn't index non-English sites; however, if an English site has them on a web page that they index, Google will have them in their index in about a month and others seem to just follow google.
There are also some "Leyendas del llanero Adentro" or stories from the Llanero on llanera.com. I went to Llanera.com today (7 Dec 2003) and saw my first web page that was hacked. I was shocked. It sounded like something a 13 year old would do and say. Lets hope they get it fixed soon. One of the stories that brought a smile to my face was "Florentino y El Diablo". When you "Escuchela" or play it, you get to listen to the story of the encounter of Florentino and The Devil. This is another one of the forms where you have to visit the main page and use the mouse to follow "El Llano" to select "Leyendas". Then, you can select Florentino's story and sit back and listen to Florentino's story. It is fully accompanied by sound effects such as birds (aves or pájaros), thunder (trueno), and etc. There is a song about it, which I first heard on Live365´s Alma Llanera, and I was sensitive to the name before I saw it on llanera.com.
A new web page that I found recently is about música llanera from Llanera Venezolono. Llanera.com is from the Columbian side and Música Llanera Venezolono is from Venezuela but it brought up so many security popups that I quite linking it. If you do a web search on Google for Llanera Venezolana, you will find a number of sites of interest.
There is also a web page associated with a school in the Arauca region in Columbia. The theme of the region is listed as "Sangre Negra, Querpo Verde", which I interpret as "Black Blood, Green Body". They have bleed black and I think that is a mistranslation. The "black blood" is oil or petroleum and the "green body" is the vegatation that a lot of rain will produce. The web site had a number of images and I viewed each one. I found the Arauca region looks very beautiful and receives 20x as much rain as where I live. Their expected rainfall is 2500-3000 mm/year versus the local rate of 100-150 mm/year. (If you wonder why I use numbers when I should be using words, it is because a number doesn't require a translation. The same logic applies to not using a "," separator. The seperators such as "," and "." are inverted in many of the Spanish speaking countries. So, I use whole numbers to avoid the confusion that using the seperators would produce.) A group playing the arpa, quatro, and maracas can be seen in the Arauca region photos. See "Musicians", picture 24 for an example or click the link.
The web page demonstrates some interesting ways of solving problems with a simple solutions. For example, how do you create a simple trail over a river? I think that someone from some of the more developed areas would over kill the solution. When I saw one of their solutions, I saw something that was KISS simple and worthy of a "¡WOW!". See the crossing on Arauca Region site. The people walking on the foot bridge give you an idea of the size on the crossing.