From drumming with its roots in Africa, to Spanish-influenced guitar and harp music and the indigenous contribution of maracas, Venezuelan music is largely unknown outside the country.
With a blog based on videos of key groups and individuals I hope this music will reach a wider public and get the attention it deserves.
Joropo, calypso, tambores, salsa, cumbia, pop, rock, Latin jazz, electronica - even slushy love songs by soap opera stars - Venezuela has it all.
Here's a summery tune about the Venezuelan beach town of Choroni by Grammy-Award winning songwriter and producer Aureliano Mendez, who records and performs under the monickers Panasuyo and Sr. Mendez.
Aureliano's exciting mix of traditional Venezuelan folk music, dance, electronica, drum n bass and ragga brought him chart success in Venezuela with his first album "Monte y Culebra" (Scrubland and Snakes"), which included tracks like "Tierra Querida".
Born in Guanare, Portuguesa State, where the influence of Llanero music is strong, he incorporates traditional instruments such as cuatro (four-string guitar) and maracas into tracks made up of live performances, loops and samples.
In 2006 he contributed to a landmark album of remixes of famous tracks by Venezuelan folk legend Simon Diaz.
His biggest triumph so far was winning two Latin Grammys in 2007. One for producing the album "Residente o Visitante" for the Puerto Rican hip-hop group Calle 13 and another for penning "Pa'l Norte" - the hit song from that album (he also sang on the track "Tango del Pecado" performed with Gustavo Santoalalla and Bajofondo).
In 2008, "Residente o Visitante" won the Grammy for best Latin Urban Album.
"Choroni" is a collaboration with the Colombian group Palenke Soultribe and comes from Aureliano's excellent second album "Papa del Panasuyo". The video was produced by Venezuelan director Otto Scheuren.
UPDATE: Tonight 10 May at 7:30 p.m. - Free Concert by Wilmer Sifontes & his Afro-American Project at the Venezuelan Cultural Centre in Bolivar Hall - 54-56 Grafton Way London, W1T 5DL
There was a time in the UK when it was impossible to find Venezuelan folk music, either live or on CD, and you had to rely on friends to burn off some tracks for you or travel to Venezuela to hear it for yourself somewhere warm and exotic like Choroni.
Thankfully, those days are over with the arrival on the scene of an exciting new band led by the Venezuelan master percussionist Wilmer Sifontes.
Called the "Afro-American Project", the group is made up of professional musicians and talented newcomers who are determined to bring the full-on experience of a Venezuelan folk fiesta to the people of the UK.
The clip shows Wilmer and his group playing a medley of Afro-Venezuelan songs, including calypsos from the southern gold-mining town of El Callao, and the kind of tambores from the coast that you can hear in Choroni on a typical Friday night.
If you want to know how true tambores is danced in these small fishing villages watch the girl with the curls swinging her hips at the end of the video.
Wilmer is already well-known on the Latin-London music scene as the percussionist for Conjunto Sabroso and the The Charlys Orchestra.
But now he is determined to spread the news about Venezuelan music to a wider audience and sees the Afro-American Project as a way to get more musicians interested in learning and performing Venezuela's rich legacy of African and Afro-Caribbean roots music.
For more information about the band or to book them for a Venezuelan, South American, or Caribbean themed event contact Wilmer Sifontes
Venezuelan DJ, producer, singer and musician Patafunk has returned to the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Texas, with a banging new dance track with Slimmy Neutron called "I Want To See You Again, Yo Quiero Verte Otra Vez" featuring SkipRage.
To celebrate 20 years making groovy Latin dance tunes, Venezuela's funkiest pop-rock-boogaloo band - Los Amigos Invisibles - have produced a movie called La Casa del Ritmo.
The movie is due to come out in Summer 2012 but a teaser trailer is out now, showing the kind of quality fans have come to expect from the Grammy-winning combo.
Starting out as an indie-underground group playing acid-jazz-inspired funk and boogaloo for a Caracas in-crowd, the six members of Amigos Invisibles were catapulted to international stardom when ex-Talking Head Davis Byrne signed them to his Luaka Bop label in 1996 for the album "The New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera".
Since then they have played in over 60 countries, produced seven quality albums, a live concert DVD and are are recognized as one of the best live Latin music acts performing today.
In 2009 their album "Commercial" - featuring the hit single Mentiras - won Best Alternative Music Album at the Latin Grammys.
In 2011, the follow-up album of outtakes "Not So Commercial" was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Latin Rock, Pop or Urban Album, their third Grammy nomination.
Judging by the massive buzz generated by the new movie, it looks set to bring them a whole host of new fans and keep them in business for many years to come.
Los Amigos Invisibles are: Julio Briceño (aka "Chulius", vocals, percussion); José Luis Pardo (aka "Cheo" or "DJ Afro", guitar, songwriting); Armando Figueredo (aka "Odnam", keyboards); Mauricio Arcas (aka "Maurimix", congas, percussion); José Rafael Torres (aka "Catire", bass); and Juan Manuel Roura (aka "Mamel", drums, percussion).
The 2012 Carnival has already kicked off in El Callao with beauty contests and calypso competitions but the big processions start Saturday 18 February - Tuesday 21 February, and end on Ash Wednesday with the start of Lent.
El Callao - A Calypso, Caribbean Carnival in the South of Venezuela
Venezuela is a country of countless parties, fiestas and dances, from individual celebrations of local patron saints to the gaitas and parrandas of Zulia state at Christmas, the Dancing Devils of Yare and Chuao during the Feast of Corpus Christi and the African drum dancing in honour of Saint John the Baptist on 24 June.
One small town that beats them all is El Callao, a centre for gold mining in Bolivar State that comes alive every year for four days during carnival to the vibrant sounds of calypso and soca and the copious consumption of rum, beer and aguardiente (fire water).
With over a 150 years of history, the El Callao carnival celebrates cultural traditions brought to Venezuela by French and English-speaking Caribbeans - including many Trinidadians - drawn to El Callao by a gold rush in 1853 that saw the town become the leading gold producer in the world. Gold production peaked by about 1885 and by the end of the century the big seams were played out and the town slipped back into obscurity.
Nowadays, it's hard to imagine this tiny, ramshackle town of tin roofs and small gold shops was once the source of so much wealth, but during carnival the population of 39,000 swells to four times that number and you get a sense of what the glory days were like.
The carnival in El Callao has a colourful cast of characters who accompany the comparsas (floats with a sound system and a themed crowd of dancers). Las Madamas are women wearing colourful 19th century dresses and turbans from the French Caribbean.
The Medio Pintos are boys and men covered in tar or paint or any other black sludgy stuff they can get their hands on. The idea is that you give them a coin called a "medio" (1 Bolivar Fuerte will do these days) or they paint you with sludge and comes from the phrase "medio o te pinto".
The Diablos are men and boys in spiky devil masks who keep the crowds back from the comparsas along the carnival route by using their short latigos (whips).
This year the Callao carnival is dedicated to Cleotilde Stapleton de Billings (1911-2009), a singer and famous madama, who did so much to popularize the folk culture and calypso traditions of El Callao with her musical group Yuruari.
The El Callao carnival of 2012 will be celebrated from 18-21 February.
Grammy-winning Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is now so famous in the USA he was invited to appear on the popular kids' show Sesame Street, alongside series-veteran Elmo, a sheep playing the violin, an octopus playing percussion and an all penguin choir.
His appearance on the show was "very, very great and amazing", but what else could you expect from a classical music conductor who gets rock star treatment wherever he goes and whose fans call him the "Dude".
Dudamel is so popular in Los Angeles, where he leads the LA Philharmonic, that there's even a hot dog named after him.
The 31-year-old conductor cemented his position as one of the hottest talents in classical music on 12 February when he won his first Grammy Award for the recording of Brahms Symphony No. 4 he did with the LA Philharmonic for the Deutsche Grammophon label.
The mop-haired super-conductor currently criss-crosses the globe, juggling a string of high-profile commitments as the principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden, the musical director of the LA Philharmonic, and the artistic director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Venezuela.
Venezuelans have been stocking up on yellow underwear, sparkling wine and grapes in the last few days, in the traditional build up to the celebration of New Year's Eve, or Fin de Año.
The locals love to welcome in the New Year with a massive bang so sales of fireworks or "triqui-traquis" have also been brisk - especially the annoying little firecrackers called "fosforitos", the bigger "empanaditas" and the fearsome rockets with names like "Matasuegra" ("Mother-in-Law Killer") and "Tumba Rancho" ("Shanty Destroyer").
As in many other places in the Spanish-speaking world, New Year traditions in Venezuela involve various ways of saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new one in a way that will bring good luck, good health, love and prosperity.
Yellow pants are worn to bring luck and money (they are the colour of gold after all), and red pants are believed to improve your chances at finding love and romance.
Make sure to wear the pants under your clothes, as you would normally.
At my first Venezuelan New Year's Eve party, I made the mistake of pulling over my jeans a pair of canary-yellow bikini briefs I'd been given for the occassion by a well-meaning friend.
While it was funny for about two minutes to strut about like a skinny superhero, it did look a bit wrong on the dancefloor, and if it hadn't been for the gallons of Black Label whiskey and Polar Ice beer we'd been drinking all evening I would have felt a bit self conscious when we went house to house to share a drink with the neighbours.
Some kids in the street even thought it was hilarious to shoot little bottle rockets at me while shouting "mira, aqui viene el supermancito" ("look, here comes the little Superman"), lighting the rockets while holding the sticks in their hands and then firing them straight down the street at my distinctive New Year attire.
Luckily, nobody got burnt, but I did feel a bit confused when I woke up the next day on the sofa with a sore head and these strange pants strangling my nether regions. Even if they'd been bright scarlet I cannot see how they could have brought me any luck in the romance department.
Another popular New Year's custom is to wear new clothes for the first time - known as "estrenos" (just as a new film has its "estreno", its premiere) - again to bring good luck and prosperity.
Generally, New Year's Eve parties follow the same pattern as Christmas Eve, with festive music such as gaitas - classics like "Viejo Año" by Maracaibo 15 or Nestor Zavarce's New Year tearjerker "Faltan Cinco Pa' Las Doce" - and the usual salsa vieja and reggaeton party favourites followed by a meal of yuletide foods such as pan de jamon, hallacas, ensalada de gallina, pernil and drinks like ponche crema.
As the countdown begins to the magic midnight hour guests quickly grab their 12 grapes and a glass of sparkling wine or champagne and try to gobble down a grape for each of the 12 chimes, known as the "12 campanas".
As each grape represents a good month in the year to come you can imagine the rush to get them down.
Any remaining grapes are usually washed down with champagne as the last chime of midnight ends, which is the cue for "los cañonazos" - the deafening fireworks displays that mark the start of the New Year.
This is also time for New Year hugs and kisses, generally to the sound of a traditional New Year song like "Año Nuevo, Vida Nueva" ("New Year, New Life") by Billo's Caracas Boys.
Few traditions are as dramatic as the annual burning of the "Old Year" in the Andean states of Merida, and Tachira, where papier mache figures representing the problems of the old year are paraded through the streets before being burnt at midnight to the sound of gaita music and the deafening explosions of thousands of triqui-traquis.
So now you know what to do to have an authentic Venezuelan New Year's Eve party. Grab some grapes, slip into your best yellow pants and have a fantastic New Year.
Paz, amor y prosperidad and a Feliz Año Nuevo pa' to' mi gente!
