Onda Nueva

Onda nueva, Spanish for 'new wave', is a Venezuelan popular music genre created by pianist and composer *Aldemaro Romero* around 1970. It rebuilds the Venezuelan joropo, with its harp, cuatro and maracas patterns in alternating duple and triple metres, using the harmonic language and soft rhythmic feel of Brazilian bossa nova and the arranging practices of jazz. Performed by orchestra, jazz combo or vocal group, onda nueva turns folk material into urbane, harmonically sophisticated song without surrendering the joropo's rhythmic identity, and it became the signature sound of Venezuelan popular music in the 1970s.