Chicha (Peruvian Cumbia)
Located in 1 route
Peru's urban migrant cumbia, fusing Colombian cumbia with Andean huayno melody and pentatonic phrasing, electric-guitar riffs, Farfisa organ, timbales and güiro. Tempos run 100–115 BPM with jangly, reverb-soaked guitars tracing huayno-derived tunes over a cumbia rhythm; vocals are plaintive and communal, singing of migration, work, poverty and love in the shantytowns of Lima. The sound is at once psychedelic and folkloric, danceable and melancholic — the soundtrack of Peru's rural-to-urban generation.
History
Chicha was born of the great Andean migration to coastal Lima from the late 1960s, as guitarist-led bands blended cumbia with highland huayno for displaced provincial audiences; Los Destellos and the Amazonian groups Juaneco y su Combo and Los Mirlos pioneered the guitar sound, while Chacalón y la Nueva Crema and Los Shapis became the mass idols of the 1980s chicha boom, filling Lima's 'chichódromos.' Named for the Andean maize beer and long stigmatized as lower-class music, chicha was later reclaimed as a defining Peruvian genre and won worldwide attention through reissue compilations and the revival of its psychedelic wing. It is the direct ancestor of Peruvian tecnocumbia and modern Andean cumbia-pop.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Barbès Records, 'The Roots of Chicha' liner notes
- El Comercio / El Popular (Peru), histories of chicha and Los Shapis
- Wikipedia, 'Peruvian cumbia' with cited scholarship