Chicha is a style of music that was originally played by the Indian bands of the Peruvian Amazon. In the ’60s, American oil companies started exploiting the oil de-posits there. With money flowing into the indigenous areas, Indians picked up electric guitars and combined Colombian cumbias with American rock and surf music to create chicha. The music sounds like Dick Dale play-ing Andean folk music in a Colombian dive backed up

by Tex-Mex-style Farfisa. When chicha bands moved to Lima in the early ’70s, chicha became a thriving subgenre, but it was dying out when Olivier Conan, owner of New York’s Barbés nightclub and record label, discovered it on a 2005 trip to Peru. He bought all the cassettes he could find and put out a compilation of chicha hits—The Roots of Chicha—in 2007. He also started Chicha Libre to play the old hits and his own chicha compositions. The chicha groove has a slinky, cumbia-like feel that makes it perfect party