The Peruvian Amazon is a positively foreboding place, or so I gathered from the research I did before an aborted trip there. As soon as I learned of the parasite that can travel up a stream of urine and lay eggs in your urethra, I figured that the potential benefits of such an adventure might indeed be outweighed by the likely costs. Nevertheless, visions of Peru still dance with my travel bug, and if they were fueled by white corn liquor with a pan-Latino wah-wah soundtrack, I would call them Chicha dreams.
Chicha is two things: a hot, spine-crunching liquor made from fermented maize that only fools and street kids drink straight, and a syncretic music style that is featured on The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru. This is some festive, drunken, sweet-smelling music, and the sprinkle of wah-wah here and synthesizer there must have sounded out of this world in the Peruvian late ’60s. This pop is fairly innocuous by today’s psych standards (say, for example, Axolotl or No Neck), but one can imagine that compared to the fairly regimented and formulaic structure of Chicha’s antecedents, the music must have been on par with Elvis’ hips in terms of the reaction it garnered from straight-laced Peruvians.
The fundamental rhythm of Chicha is borrowed from Colombia’s claim to fame, cumbia. Present is the requisite section composed of bongos, congas, and timbales, but thrown on top are electric guitars with effects rigged up, Moog synthesizers, bass guitar, and Farfisa organs. The plugged elements lend the music the sounds of surf and psychedelia, while the traditional accordion element found throughout Latin music was tossed aside.
Many of the songs owe their pentatonic scales to Andean melodies, but you won’t hear any pan-pipes. However, many of the group choruses sound remarkably similar to the folk and traditional tunes often heard from the incredible altitudes of Peru’s vast alpine region. For example, “Linda Munequita” has child-like voices chanting “lye-lye-lya-lye-lye-la” while high-pitched wolf-whistling and Latin men hootin’ ‘n’ hollerin’ lend a fiesta atmosphere. It’s no surprise that Angel Anibal Rosado, whose band is represented here by “Linda,” was born in the highlands before moving to Lima.
Each Chicha band felt free to draw from different genres in order to craft a distinctive sound, but at the heart of each Chicha tune is either a slow or fast cumbia beat. Interestingly, a wildly different syncretic music form of today’s popular Latin music world, reggaeton, also owes its fundamental rhythms to cumbia. So it would seem that Colombia’s place in Latin music history is often overshadowed by the presence of heavyweights like Cuban son or Brazilian Tropicália.
The most on-point use of psychedelic music conventions is delivered by Los Mirios, who have four songs on the comp to their credit. For example, the opening notes of “El Milagro Verde” come on positively inebriated, and the guitar only gets more double vision as the song sways its rump through some fairly infectious mid-tempo cumbia chops. According to the liner notes, which are pretty good, this band hailed originally from the Amazonian town of Moyobomba, and they’re still at it to date.
I’m also partial to “Vacilando con Ayahuesca” by Juaneco y Su Combo, which references in its title ayahuesca, the hyper-potent psychedelic drug of Amazonian origin, and features moaning female vocals reminiscent of the song “Jungle Fever” by The Chakachas. The members of the band are purported to be of Shipibo Indian descent and dressed in traditional indigenous costumes to flesh out the claim.
Los Destellos, a non-Amazonian band from Lima, deserve a nod for their interpolation of Beethoven's “Für Elise” on “Para Elisa.” Band-leader Enrique Delgado was schooled in criollo, the Peruvian national music, a blend of “Spanish waltzes, polkas, Afro-Peruvian festijo, and Andean influences.” This is syncretism at its finest, a mind-bogglingly adept adaptation that seems so terribly familiar at first listen — but that is so secure in its own footwear — that you’d be hard-pressed to not go away thinking it was a totally original tune. These Chicha bands were terrific at taking and borrowing other styles and tricks, running them through a meat grinder, spicing them, casing them in Amazonian skins, and selling them as a totally new sausage wiener.
Most every Chicha band came from working-class origins, and whereas a form like Tropicália was for the genius class and discriminating music aficionados, Chicha is for the peasants and bar stool pigeons who just need something fun and festive to wash down another glass of corn liquor.
Every once in a while, a truly stellar compilation from the depths of "world music" gets released, and my collection gets thicker each time. I eat albums like this up, because however trite or unimpressive this music might be to the ears of those Peruvians who grew up with it, when I’m in the car smoking joints on my way to the used book store or trying to wrestle some coconut meat from its husk in the kitchen at our complex by the milk factory, I throw some Chicha on to transport me away. And then there I am: no parasites in sight, but a whole load of party rhythms from the dark green Amazon.
More about: Various Artists: Barbes Records
