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CD Review
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Chicha sprung up in the late '60s along the Peruvian Amazon, party music inspired by Colombian cumbias, adding in regional inspirations like the pentatonic scales of traditional Andean melodies, Cuban guajiras and more exotic North American surf and psychedelic sounds. This music, both passionately indigenous and aggressively global, bears quite a few parallels to the Tropicalia movement that was taking place in adjacent Brazil at the same time. But where the Tropicalismos took the rhythm section and power of North American (and British) rock and roll and overlaid the sounds of Brazil that were ingrained (by law) in local musicians, Chicha took another route to globalization. These groups were built around standard Afro-Cuban percussion sections (bongos, congas, bells, timbales) and wood flutes of Colombian cumbias, but the Peruvian groups began to replace the more traditional accordion with electric guitars and bass and Farfisa organs and Moog synthesizers that they heard on the radio in surf and psychedelic music from the north. The songs would never be mistaken for rock music, but global influences are plain, and the results of this first wave of Chicha are invigorating. It's the sound of modernism poking up through the soil and air in this ancient land, and empowering the newly urban population taking in the music and mood of the world without abandoning local culture and tradition. Barbes has collected 17 tracks from the greatest bands of the early era of Chicha (which still continues today in a slightly cheesy populist form), and they have done a great job of curating an introduction to this music, and the re-mastered tracks sound great. [JM 10/03/07 >> go there
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