The pandero jarocho is a frame drum used in son jarocho, the traditional music of Veracruz, Mexico — a tradition that traces its roots to roughly the 1770s, when dances brought by enslaved Angolans (via Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico) blended with Spanish stringed-instrument tradition and Indigenous ceremonial elements to form something distinctly Veracruzano.

The pandero’s natural home is the fandango: a community celebration, not a stage performance, organized around the tarima — a raised wooden dance platform that functions as an instrument in its own right, resonating under dancers’ zapateado footwork. There’s no audience at a proper fandango, only participants — everyone present is expected to sing, play, dance, or recite verses (décimas) in turn. The pandero sits alongside the jarana, requinto jarocho, leona (acoustic bass), and the quijada (a donkey-jawbone rattle) as the tradition’s core instrumentation.