Guaco (VE)

About

Guaco started out in Maracaibo, Venezuela, as a traditional gaita zuliana group back in the 1960s, but what set them apart was their willingness to tear up the rulebook. By the 1970s they were weaving salsa horn arrangements, electric guitars, and violins into a genre where none of those things had any business being, and the result was a sound that felt genuinely new. Over the decades that blend kept stretching, pulling in jazz, funk, rock and roll, and vallenato until the so called Guaco rhythm became a category of its own. The band built one of the most decorated runs in Venezuelan tropical music, sweeping multiple categories at the Pepsi Venezuela Music Awards between 2012 and 2015, picking up Album of the Year twice along with Song of the Year, Tropical Artist of the Year, and Salsa Song of the Year, among others. Named after a white bird that used to circle the house where the founding members rehearsed, Guaco has been a constant presence in Latin music for well over half a century.