Decked out in a floor-length black leather coat and white snakeskin boots, Colombia's king of the drug ballad sweeps onstage, his gold necklace and rings glittering under a bare bulb.

Uriel Henao and his band, the Tigers of the South, blast into a ballad about a Good Samaritan cocaine lord, and the drunken crowd erupts into cheers.

Henao, 34, is Colombia's most celebrated singer of "narcocorridos," a semi-clandestine genre that celebrates the lives and travails of the country's infamous drug lords, considered by many Colombians as folk heroes.

Their songs have titles such as "Clandestine Airstrip," "Smuggled Goods and Treason" and "Cartels Alive and Kicking" -- jaunty ditties about a lavish lifestyle of cocaine trafficking, beauty queen girlfriends and gangland justice.

In one song, Henao croons: "I have all the women I want, models and beauty queens. I like the finest whisky. I am more powerful than Pablo Escobar. This is the good life."

Henao, who calls himself a minstrel of Colombian life, says his songs do not glorify drug kingpins but talk about daily reality in Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer. He also spins tales of poor coca growers, forced to cultivate the raw ingredient for cocaine to make a living.

"We sing about what is going on in Colombia," Henao said during a concert in a working-class district in the capital Bogota, where he enjoys icon status. "We can't hide the fact that a lot of people live off the coca business and that drug traffickers are popular heroes among the poor."

Of late, narcocorridos have become less cheerful as President Alvaro Uribe intensifies a US-backed crop-spraying offensive to crush coca cultivation and steps up the pace of arrests and extraditions of smugglers to the United States.

GRINGO PLANES AND BROKEN-HEARTED DRUG LORDS

Recent songs wail about lush fields of coca burned by "gringo planes" and broken-hearted drug lords and their lackeys abandoned by their women as the law breathes down their necks.

Narcocorridos are hugely popular in villages where coca cultivation is the basis of the economy. The rudimentary tunes feature accordion, guitar and drums with a simple melody and oom-pah beat. Some songs have sound effects such as gunshots or drug planes landing in clandestine airstrips.

Many radio stations refuse to air the songs, saying they can bring trouble. The genre lives on mostly in taverns and country fairs, played by travelling bands, says Alirio Castillo, who has produced six compilation CDs of narcocorrido hits.

After the demise of the big drug cartels, narcocorridos diversified their themes to include unemployment, rural life, corruption and outlawed groups fighting in the country's war.

In "The Story of a Guerrilla and a Paramilitary," Henao tells of two peasants who get drunk in a brothel and end up killing each other in a shootout after learning they belong to rival outlaw groups.

He says he gets his inspiration crisscrossing Colombia in a pick-up truck with his 10-strong band which includes two mini-skirted dancers.

Tigers of the South drew its name from the Grammy-winning Tigres del Norte (Tigers of the North), an internationally successful band of Mexican immigrants. Henao's audience is mostly local.

His performance on a recent drizzly night took place in a dimly lit garage across the street from a cock-fighting ring.

After a triumphant entry in which he parted the sea of fans like a modern Moses, Henao belted out his hit "I Prefer a Tomb in Colombia to a Prison Cell in the United States." Fans roared back the lyrics, reaching out to touch their idol.

"The powerful don't like this music but it's the music of the country people. Many of us left the countryside to find jobs in the big city so we come to listen to village stories," said Andres Guzman, a 25-year-old "narcocorrido" enthusiast.

Henao said he is penning a song about one of the country's wiliest drug lords, former Cali cartel boss Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, known as the Chess Player, who was arrested last March.

"I'm waiting for Gilberto to be extradited to the United States to release the song. It's going to be a big hit."