THE ROOTS OF CHICHA
PSYCHEDELIC CUMBIAS FROM PERU (Barbes Records)

There's a real buzz about this album, a compilation of psychedelic cumbias from the 60s. It's fun and repetitious at the same time. Listening to it all the way through is like chugging beer, you know you are getting intoxicated but having a great time and damn the consequences. Surprisingly the origin is Peru, a country not associated with the loping cumbia beat, found more often in the Northern hemisphere. Lots of warbly wah wah guitar, woops & other shagadelic effects, pentatonic Andean vocals & tricky drumming keep it loping along. Between 1966 and 1978 the music evolved in the shanty-towns of Lima as migrant workers from the oil-fields of the Amazon brought the instruments of Yanqui rock to the too-tired-to-dance cumbia and folktunes of home. Electric guitar and Farfisa replaced accordeon. There'd a far-horizon cowboy gaze of the Ennio Morricone type behind this sound. On the other hand, "Para Elisa" is a hot instrumental take on Beethoven's "For Elsie" (though the bridge goes somewhere else), also plucked from a wiry electric guitar. The brittle twiddly lead, reminiscent of Venetian mandolin as well as Surfaris' Stratocaster rock, dominates with very interesting & easy-to-follow vocals. A crude Moog is teased out on Los Mirlos' "Muchachitas del Oriente"-- totally gratuitous but probably considered hip at the time. The "ghost riders" bass redeems it. "Mi morena rebelde" sports what sounds like an electrified tres -- it's a banjo! More shagadelic woops herald "Si me quieres" by Los Hijos del Sol with fine bongo: a relatively straight cumbia. This is the first time this music has been released outside of Peru, and it is probably hard to find there. It is truly a delight.

 BY: Alastair Johnston