Various – The Rough Guide To Peru Rare Groove : 60’s – 70’s Salsa Cumbia Mambo Latin Rock Music Album Compilation
Label: World Music Network
Released : 2016
Track List
01 La Sonora De Lucho Macedo: Quiero Bailar Contigo 00:00
02 Los Compadres Del Ande: Lamparita 02:11
03 Carlos Pickling Y Su Organo Espacial: Lluvia Con Nieve/El Molestoso 05:05
04 Johnny Arce Y Su Orquesta: Macondo 10:00
05 Coco Lagos Y Sus Orates: La Rumba Empezó 12:49
06 Andres De Colbert Y Su Orquesta: Lobos Al Escape 15:48
07 Los Rumbaney: Serrano 18:05
08 Juaneco Y Su Combo: Tambores De La Selva 21:03
09 Los Wemblers: Baión De La Selva 24:13
10 Pedro Miguel y sus Maracaibos: Son con boogaloo 27:19
11 Popi Y Sus Pirañas: El Negro Coco 30:41
12 Aniceto Y Sus Fabulosos: Guajira Enamorada 33:17
13 Los Blacanguay: La Palmadita 36:34
14 Chacal Y Sus Estrellas: Nuestra Pobreza 39:43
15 Félix Martinez: Me Voy Llorando 43:08
16 Otto de Rojas: Ha Muerto Un Rumbero 46:14
This crate digging Rough Guide brings to light forgotten gems and golden grooves of tropical Peru. Peru is as varied and diverse in its regions, climates, and natural flora and fauna as it is in its people, history and culture. In terms of national popular dance music since the 1950s this compelling variety is equally evident. Several imported and subsequently customised strains of popular music tended to dominate the public’s taste. Genres with Caribbean origins from Cuba and Puerto Rico such as mambo, son, bolero, merengue, salsa, descarga, and boogaloo, plus the equally influential cumbia, porro, pompo, and paseo from Colombia were widely significant, as were North American and European styles such as rock, soul, and to a lesser extent jazz ¬– as well as later developments like funk and disco. Though a lot of press has been given in recent years to chicha and other domestic forms of cumbia in Peru, featuring certain popular groups over and over, there has not been as much of a buzz on the country’s ‘other’ tropical music, the above-mentioned mostly Cuban-derived forms, or the rarer, more obscure tracks yet to be touted, and this collection aims to change this imbalance by featuring more of the former and digging deeper into the latter. In the golden era of Peru’s record and radio industry, musicians, composers and producers created their own variants of these foreign-born genres, most frequently to satisfy and attract their dancing public (often defined by race/class divisions) with something they could recognize and call their own. Using these imported styles as building blocks they put their personal spin on what was generally termed (in the case of Latin dance music) música tropical bailable. Home-grown ingredients in the form of dances, melodies, and instrumentation from the array of Peru’s indigenous peoples (such as the huayno) as well as Africanm and Spanish-influenced música criolla, Spanish flamenco and Brazilian carimbó, samba and baião all swirled together in the melting pot with imported tropical Afro-Caribbean or North American/European pop sounds to create an ambiance as competitive, creative, sophisticated and diverse as anywhere else at the time. As far as tropical music in Peru, visiting artists from Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, New York, Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico were extremely popular as were their recordings. Everyone from Celia Cruz to Carlos Santana had their moment in Lima and elsewhere, oftentimes touching a cultural nerve that ran deep, sharing music that many peruanos felt a kinship with due to a similar colonial past and racial makeup. Interestingly, unlike the music of Cuba, Mexico or Colombia, it is not until recently that Peru’s rich tropical golden grooves have been mined properly for wider global audiences to enjoy. The amazing thing is this historical treasure trove seems to be a nearly inexhaustible resource, as this collection showcases a lot of music not on other recent samplers. Though Peruvian musicians have made almost exact copies of popular foreign tunes, several ‘standards’ of tropical music originally come from Peruvian authors and performers, though a foreign cover version may be the most well known. From ‘Todos Vuelven’ and ‘Toro Mata’ (made famous by Rubén Blades and Celia Cruz respectively) to ‘Macondo’ (inspired by García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude and covered countless times internationally) and ‘Colegiala’ (a mega-smash for Colombia’s Rodolfo y su Típica but originally by Walter León’s Los Ilusionistas), Peru has supplied hits for the world of salsa and cumbia time and time again. Several recent collections have featured the originals, and here for example we present the song that launched a hundred iterations, Johnny Arce’s ‘Macondo’.
