FRESH from sharing the stage last week with guitarist John Williams at Sheffield’s Globe, harpist Carlos Orozco spoke about his never-ending devotion to the soul of the llanera. Much like the tango or blues, the llanera “provided a running and charged commentary on the everyday lives of those hardy people of the plains, their sorrows, anxieties, amorous calamities, misfortune and all kind of tribulations,” he says.

“And since people today endure much the same vagaries of life they would carry on listening to the llaneras for solace as much as for the ever-present thrill of hearing an old favourite which they’ll sing along to over a few beers.”

“Machine-gun” Orozco hails from Barquisimeto in northern Venezuela. It’s the fourth most populated city and province of the country and is often called its musical capital but perhaps more enticing is its descriptor “the twilight city.”

Orozco started early. At the age of five he was in his father’s band shaking maracas and over the years taught himself to play an array of string instruments, among them the quarto and the harp.

Although often shunned by purists and academics, “Orozco” is widely recognised as a major innovator of the llaneras, the music that originated among the mestizo herders — llaneros — of the wide open grassland plains of western Venezuela and parts of Colombia.

The llaneros were exceptional riders who fought with lances and in 1819 Simon Bolivar led an army of them in a surprise crossing of the eastern Andes to a legendary victory over the Spanish in the battle of Boyaca and the capture of Bogota three days later. It was a victory giving him a decisive advantage in the war of liberation.

The llanero culture, much like that of the Argentinian gaucho or the US cowhand, has centred around cattle drives and outdoor living. Their music is played on harps, maracas and cuatros — all easy to ferry around on horseback — and their dance, the joropo, is the national dance of Venezuela.

The Colombian affection for dramatic metaphors — they called Farc founder member Manuel Marulanda “Tirofijo” (Sureshot) — and Orozco got the nickname “Metralleta” (Machine-gun) after one of his tours of the country. It’s a curiously weaponised reflection on his dexterity and manual agility when playing the harp and it has stuck. But others prefer the visual and poetic “butterfly hands” to describe the action of his fingers flickering over the harp strings.

One of his best-loved numbers is Old Horse by Simon Diaz — which the Gypsy Kings reworked into the massive hit Bamboleo: “When love arrives like this/in this way/you are not to blame/love has no schedule/or a date on the calendar/when desires are joined...” Another firm favourite is the “environmental” joropo The Soul of the Plains by Pedro Gutierrez and Rafael Coronado: “I was born on this bank/of the rippling Arauca River/I am brother of the foam/of the herons, of the roses,/and the sun and the sun.”

When asked about his innovations in the genre Orozco makes a distinction between lyrics “that still obey the traditional canon of emotive commentary — that is expected of them — and so does the melody but the arrangements and improvisations dip into jazz and the vocals are impacted on by the soul-laden deliveries of Stevie Wonder.” The llaneros have been decimated by the industrialisation of agriculture and cattle breeding in particular, Orozco says, “but their music continues to resonate in the bars of the townships fuelling a nostalgia for old certitudes in times of dramatic daily uncertainty and lingering, imminent danger.”

Although he wouldn’t say it explicitly, Machine-gun nonetheless appears to be rather uncomfortable with the way the different exponents of llaneras have been drafted willy-nilly in aid of the different political camps.

His unshakable belief, he says, is in music “being a neutral and a worthy unifying pursuit.”