Larry Bellorín hails from Monagas, Venezuela and is a legend of Llanera music. Joe Troop is from North Carolina and is a GRAMMY-nominated bluegrass and oldtime musician. Larry was forced into exile and is an asylum seeker in North Carolina. Joe, after a decade in South America, got stranded back in his stomping grounds in the pandemic. Larry works construction to make ends meet. Joe’s acclaimed “latingrass” band Che Apalache was forced into hiatus, and he shifted into action working with asylum seeking migrants.
Currently based in the Triangle of North Carolina, both men are versatile multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters on a mission to show that music has no borders. As a duo they perform a fusion of Venezuelan and Appalachian folk music on harp, banjo, cuatro, fiddle, maracas, guitar, upright bass, and whatever else they decide to throw in the van. The program they offer features a distinct blend of their musical inheritances and traditions as well as storytelling about the ways that music and social movements coalesce.
The two musicians will be performing a concert at the Zoetropolis Cinema Stillhouse in Lancaster on Sunday January 15th at 7:30 sponsored by the Susquehanna Folk Music Society. More information and tickets can be found on the official SFMS website!
Prior to the concert, SFMS Executive Director Peter Winter Lee got to chat to Joe about the duo’s origins, the process of bringing two distinct folk musical styles together, and learning from each other!
What is something you’ve learned from the other during the collaboration?
We are both learning each other’s respective folk traditions, song by song. But music aside, we are learning about each other’s worldviews. We are from completely different worlds but enjoy expanding our notions of reality and finding common ground.
What are ways you feel your respective musical folk traditions are similar?
Llanera music and Appalachian folk are like old friends, perhaps from a past life or something. Both polycultural hybrid forms born in the Americas, both string band traditions with vibrant festivals and recording industries born out of them. The rhythmic and melodic structures are distinct, but the way practitioners make music a life path is similar. The vibe is the same.
What do you want your audience to take away from a Larry and Joe concert?
An entire gamut of emotions, an array of textures and colors, a whole bunch of stories, faith in the human spirit, and hopefully healing. We feel like our shows are medicine for the human soul.
You are both really passionate about how music and social justice work together. Can you speak a little about that?
I myself have worked with different communities in the US and found my footing as an artivist by writing social justice ballads about disenfranchised friends. Right before I met Larry, I was specifically working with asylum seeking migrants on the Mexican border, where I volunteered at a shelter in 2021. The social justice component of our duo project is self-evident, though. Larry is an asylum seeker, who had to leave behind a twenty some year musical career and work construction for 6 years in North Carolina to provide for his family. His is the story of a maestro musician forced to do back-breaking labor just to survive. January 11th is his last day on that job, though, and from then on, this duo is both of our full-time jobs. Larry’s difficult story is one of millions in this country, and we hope this duo can shine a light on issues surrounding migration.
Peter Winter Lee is the Executive Director of The Susquehanna Folk Music Society and plays guitar and sings in Celtic/Americana Band Seasons with his siblings. Give him a follow on instagram if you’re so inclined.
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