![]() ![]() ![]() Los Mirlos were popular in the '70s, and their tunes include "Sonido Amazonico," a vaguely Arabic melody played on surf guitar over a stark cumbia beat "El Milagro Verde," with a chiming electric guitar, shimmering, hiccoughing Farfisa and rowdy background vocals, and "Muchachita del Oriente," which sounds like a Cuban cowboy song with a Columbian beat. "A Patricia" plays off their guitarist's psychedelic chops against the bands ever shifting rhythmic accents on timbales, bongos and cowbells. ![]() They transform Beethoven's Für Elise into "Para Elisa" a jaunty track with the melody played on twangy surf guitar backed by a simple rhythm section of güira, bongos and bass. Los Destellos name all their compositions after women and show the strongest Latin/Cuban flavor and the most eclectic approach. American listeners will be surprised at how familiar the music sounds, with the sprightly garage band meets Tex-Mex bounce of the organ, the twangy surf guitar lines, Cuban counter rhythms, and Andean melodies. He finally tracked down six Chicha combos - los Mirlos, Juaneco y Su Combo, los Hijos del Sola, los Destellos, los Diablos Rojos and Eusebio y Su Banjo - and put together this 17-track compilation. He also discovered that the label that put out a lot of the music had gone bankrupt and many of the master recordings were lost. Oliver Conan, owner of the Barbés nightclub and record label, discovered the music on a recent trip to Peru. Like Afro Peruvian music, chicha was frowned upon by the middle and upper classes, but unlike the music of Afro-Peru, chicha never gained an international following, until now. When the Indians moved to the city, most notably Lima, they brought their music with them. As cheap electric instruments became available, Amazon Indians put together dance bands that used the syncopated beat of cumbia - which sounds like a laid-back Latin cousin of ska - as the foundation for melodies that sound like Andean folk tunes, played on electric guitar with lots of effects and Tex-Mex style Farfisa. Chicha is an indigenous music that was spontaneously created by the culture clash of the '60s when the Indian population of the Peruvian Amazon discovered the Columbian pop music known as cumbia and American rock & roll. ![]()
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