Playing 'La Bamba' for an hour? Must be a Mexican fandango!

Jarana players join a mass jam session at a Veracruz fandango while the dancers pound out rhythms with their heels on the wooden tarima. John Burnett for NPR hide caption

VERACRUZ, Mexico — The historic city of Veracruz, facing the Gulf of Mexico, is so proud of its musical heritage that every hour on the hour, the bells in the clock tower in the central plaza play "La Bamba." It's not Ritchie Valens' rock 'n' roll hit from 1958. The original "La Bamba" has been played in this sultry, moldering port city for centuries.

"La Bamba" is the most famous song of a regional genre called son jarocho, which means the music of Veracruz. It is played at joyous community fiestas called fandangos that have nothing to do with the online movie-streaming service. The fandango emerged from the multiethnic population that evolved along the Gulf Coast after conquistador Hernán Cortés dropped anchor and established Veracruz as Mexico's first port in the early 1500s.

This syncopated, jubilant folk music is a melange of European, Caribbean and Indigenous influences. While fandangos — where folks gather to play their instruments, sing and dance — are more than 300 years old, their popularity is now spreading around the world.

But if you want to experience the real thing, go to Veracruz.

It's Saturday night in mid-August. The villainous coastal heat of the day has yet to subside. A couple dances on a wooden platform, the woman in a floral dress that fans out when she pounds her heels, the man in a traditional jarocho straw hat and a tropical shirt that's drenched with sweat. Off to the side, a guy in a black T-shirt and shades is playing a quijada, the jawbone of a donkey, by scraping the teeth and slapping the mandible to make them rattle.

People are swilling ice-cold Mexican beer and eating tamales wrapped in banana leaves. As the night wears on audience members join the trio of musicians so that it becomes a giant jam session. They are playing a diminutive, eight-string guitar native to the region called a jarana.

Pretty soon, La Bamba has two dozen jaraneros up there strumming, and the three-chord song goes on—trance-like—for 15 minutes.