Freaky, yes, but delicious too. That's the best way to describe chicha music from Peru. You can easily understand where the freakiness comes from when you listen to the roots of chicha music.

That's an old track from the 50s in Colombia recorded by musician Alberto Pacheco. The tune follows the traditional coastal Colombian dance rhythm called cumbia. In the 1960s, cumbia drifted south to Peru, and cumbia bands began popping up left and right.

Peruvian pop musicians were also falling under the spell of American and British rock electric guitars. The surf guitar sound in particular was seductive and got woven into their songs. And though the whole situation could have been a case of too many cultural influences creating a big mess, it wasn't.

Instead, it turned into chicha music. That's a Peruvian band called Los Mirlos.

They provide four of the tracks on a new collection of chicha music called "The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru."

Olivier Conan is the man who compiled The Roots of Chicha. Conan is the owner and manager of an eclectic bar and club in Brooklyn called Barbes. A couple of years ago, he went to Lima in search of new musical sounds. Conan says he spent a lot of time browsing through old pirated cassettes at street stalls.

“And one of the vendors started talking to me about this old cumbia, cumbias antiguas. And he said, oh you'll love that, listen to that. And he played Los Mirlos from some bootleg compilation, and I just completely fell in love with it. And I started going from vendor to vendor both in Lima and in other places while I was travelling through Peru. And got a pretty good collection of the music.”

So good that he had enough to put together the first fully-dedicated remastered collection of chicha music.

Olivier Conan is not just trying to sell the Chicha CD.

He's also trying to rehabilitate its reputation. Chicha has typically been frowned upon by upper classes in Peru as uncouth, in the same way that forro music in Brazil is referred to as "music for maids and taxi drivers." Literally chicha is an alcoholic drink found across the Andes that's made from corn. Like its namesake, chicha music continues to ferment. Though Olivier Conan says the way it's played these days with electronic keyboards and lots of samples, it feels cheesier than the older stuff.

He thinks there may be a rebirth of old-school chicha. But until that happens, the best thing is to stick to the authentic freaky chicha.

~Marco Werman