The Jesuit mission to Latin America during the 17th and 18th centuries left a spiritual legacy, but also a musical one. Thanks to groups such as Ex Cathedra, Sonidos de Paraquaria, Angelicum de Puebla and, most recently, Siglo de Oro we’re hearing more and more of it on record, but nothing quite like this new recording from the Czech ensemble Collegium Marianum.

The Prague-based baroque group make a speciality of composers from, or active in, Central Europe. So where does that leave Latin America? In ‘Cachua Serranita’, artistic director Jana Semerádová and her musicians trace music as it travels from Europe across to Bolivia and Peru, picking up new languages, folk melodies and instrumental colours along the way. But they also explore the original roots of some of that music in the folk traditions of Moravia and Silesia, works Telemann praised for their ‘truly barbarian beauty’.

It’s an intriguing musical palimpsest, a rich tangle of textures and influences. A lack of translations can also make it a rather baffling one at times. A broadly Marian theme holds everything from instrumental concertos to folk dances, processionals and hymns together in a programme that stresses the breadth of the period’s musical evangelism.

Much of this recording’s distinctive character comes from the instrumentation. From the opening of the stately processional Hanaq pachap cussicuinin, Marcel Comendant’s cimbalom makes its presence felt, softening the crisp rhythmic edges with its reverberation and adding its querulous, glittering beauty to simple tunes. The charango (a small Andean lute) is another unusual presence, as well as a whole host of percussion.

The effect is vivid in Peruvian and Moravian folk songs alike, but perhaps most striking in works by Telemann inspired by the Haná region, dances by Jan Josef Ignác Brentner (who never set foot in South America but whose works still made their way there) and Swiss missionary Martin Schmid’s charming Pastoreta Ychepe Flauta – courtly Europe colliding with the earthier New World. Lines between notated and improvised music are blurred, most joyfully in the title-track – a breathless close to the recital, whose swaying, syncopated dance comes decorated with disarmingly jazzy obbligato embellishments.

Languages, instruments and continents may change but the spirit of dance and song – communal ritual, celebration and recreation – remain the same, Collegium Marianum argue. Anyone tempted to disagree might want to try listening to this recording without tapping a toe or swaying a hip.