By SIMON ROMERO

EL RETORNO, Colombia - He arrived at this town on the edge of guerrilla territory with his entourage. They included a producer, a sound man, two scantily clad dancers and a harried servant, who carried his cowboy hat, his snakeskin boots, his tequila and, of course, his bulky gold necklace emblazoned with the name of Uriel Henao.

“Uriel Henao needs to travel with certain standards,” said the 41-yearold balladeer, referring to himself in the third person, as is his custom. “The people in these parts expect it,” he explained after a convoy of honking pickup trucks and motorcycles led by the town’s fire truck marked his arrival for a concert here in August.

The big welcome for Mr. Henao was common enough. Colombians call him the king of the corridos prohibidos, or prohibited ballads, a musical genre that describes the exploits of guerrilla commanders, paramilitary warlords, lowly coca growers and cocaine kingpins.

Given the graphic depiction of the drug trade, some established radio stations in Colombia keep the songs off their playlists, sometimes fearful of violent reprisals that might result from glorifying one side or another in the country’s four-decade war. Scholars say Colombia’s prohibited ballads descend from Mexico’s narcocorridos, the accordion-driven songs that mythologize Mexican drug traffickers.

While Mexico’s drug ballads have existed at least since the 1930s, the genre seems to have taken root in Colombia about three decades ago when Mexican groups like Los Tigres del Norte became popular in this country. About 600 bands in Colombia play corridos .

Their songs boast titles like “Secret Airstrip,” “Coca Growers of Putumayo” and “The Snitch,” reflecting aspects of Colombia’s resilient drug trade. The genre has developed into a form of oral history of Colombia’s long internal war involving guerrilla groups, paramilitary factions and government forces.

“Ballad of the Castanos” describes brothers who led exceptionally brutal paramilitary death squads. “Betrayal in the Jungle” recounts how a guerrilla defector killed his commander, before bringing the dead man’s severed hand to the authorities .

Supporters of the ballads say they provide an outlet in Colombia’s folk culture for subjects that some would rather shun. The songs also serve as an uncomfortable reminder that Colombia still vies with Peru as the world’s largest producer of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

“The corridos are most popular in hot zones because the songs tell stories of what happens,” said Alirio Castillo, a leading producer of the ballads who accompanied Mr. Henao here. Performers enjoy a broad following in the backlands where the cocaine trade and the private armies that draw strength from it persist. Mr. Henao’s “Ballad of the Coca Grower ” describes how the rural poor earn more money cultivating coca than they do working as day laborers.

“The problem is not ours, the problem comes from over there,” Mr. Henao sang at a concert here , referring to demand for Colombian cocaine in the United States. “We harvest it, and the gringos put it in their brains.” Live performances are the staple of Colombia’s ballad singers, since pirated CDs of their songs have eroded their income.

In Mr. Henao’s case, El Retorno’s municipal government paid for his concert here, plus expenses for him and his crew. During the concert, even some of the soldiers keeping the peace mouthed the words to Mr. Henao’s scathing antiestablishment song, “They’re Rats,” in which he lambastes Colombia’s politicians as “a plague” for a history of corruption that keeps millions in the country mired in poverty.

Mr. Henao finally finished performing as dawn broke. He smiled as he and his crew passed around a tequila bottle to commemorate the concert. “Colombia needs people like me to tell it the truth about what takes place in this country,” he said. “The truth sells.”