I have never heard a voice like it. Melodic and intense, liquid yet orotund. A serenade contriving to blend Dido with Pavarotti, spiced with the swagger of Jagger.

The performance makes my knees buckle. Yet the singer stays resolutely hidden – a voice disembodied but indisputably present. Given that I have travelled to the wild west of Colombia – territory only recently unshackled from the control of the notorious Medellín drug cartel – I desperately want to clasp eyes on this Latino soprano.

Our guide, Andrea Beltrán, grants my wish, extending a shaky finger. “Aquí nomás,” she whispers. “Just here.”

We are in neither an opera house nor a concert hall. Rather we are 8,200ft up in the Andean mountains, just below Cerro Montezuma’s sparsely vegetated pinnacle. We are squinting through elfin trees into a dense knot of bamboo.

Our vocalist is avian – and happens to be among the world’s rarest birds. With a hip shuffle of which Sir Mick would have been proud, the Munchique wood wren sways into view. This tiny bird is no little brown job, but unabashedly Latino in looks.