Watch the studio recording session for "Toro zacamandú (The Zacamandú Bull)" by Grupo Mono Blanco, from ¡Fandango! Sones Jarochos from Veracruz out on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. This hard-driving song features Gisela Farías's clarion voice and rural, declamatory singing style and the percussive sounds of zapateado footwork by Iván Fernández and his sister Lucero Fernández. "Hey, hey, let's herd all the cattle,/for the rains are coming. Hey, hey, the lowlands are flooding,/and the highlands are going away."

¡Fandango! Sones Jarochos from Veracruz available on CD and Digital.

Grupo Mono Blanco changed the course of music history. Beginning in 1977, Gilberto Gutiérrez led the grassroots Mexican musical group in launching a back-to-the-future renaissance, digging deep into the rural culture of Veracruz, bringing it to the forefront of musical life, and igniting a major “people’s music” movement that spread throughout Mexico, the United States, and beyond. Melding past and present, Mono Blanco breathes fresh life into the sounds of traditional stringed instruments, percussion, poetic improvisation, and the fandango community celebration.

This album is the 47th in the Smithsonian Folkways Tradiciones/Traditions Series of Latino music albums, produced with support from the Smithsonian Latino Center.