Pretty much every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. We missed Saturday, spending the day helping yet another New Yorker become an ex-New Yorker and there was no internet service where they were. And why spend a hour on the  Blackberry when we could do it in five minutes the following day?

So, Saturday’s song was #312:

Chicha Libre – Sonido Amazonico

The greatest one-chord jam of alltime, a melody that will someday be as well-known as, say, Fur Elise or Satisfaction. Although the band is American, Chicha Libre have almost singlehandedly resurrected chicha, the intoxicating Peruvian hybrid of Colombian cumbia, American surf music and psychedelia that was wildly popular in the Amazon oil boom towns of the late 60s and early 70s. The original by Los Mirlos (available on the amazing Roots of Chicha compilation) is a lot of fun but it’s this version, the title track to Chicha Libre’s 2008 debut cd, which is the best, keyboardist Josh Camp’s vintage Hohner Electrovox adding a hypnotic swirl.

And today’s is #311:

Elvis Costello – No Dancing

Here the preeminent musical psychopathologist of our time dissects what being a killjoy is all about over wickedly catchy, slightly doo-wop inflected janglerock. From My Aim Is True, 1977. The link above is the album version; here’s a fascinating live video with the Attractions from what looks like the following year.

There have been more intense, more riveting shows this year but for sheer fun factor, this one tops the charts, a perfect match of band and milieu. Chicha Libre get plenty of ink here because they (at least at this point) seem to be the sole American practitioners of chicha, the intoxicatingly fun, reverb-drenched Peruvian hybrid of Colombian cumbias, American surf music, psychedelia and all kinds of other latin styles. The way Chicha Libre play it, on the surface it sounds a lot like surf music but it’s bouncier and although the music gets pretty dark in places, the band can’t resist taking pretty much anything – Michael Jackson, the Clash, Erik Satie – and doing it chicha style. They did pretty much everything last night. With much of the crowd gathered on the prow, the boat rocked on the waves as it left the harbor, guitarist Vincent Douglas gamely going with the flow and letting his richly twangy chords ring out while the floor shifted.

In two sets and what had to be at least two hours of music, the band mixed obscure chicha instrumentals by los Mirlos, Juaneco y Su Combo (whose anthology Chicha Libre’s own Barbes Records just put out) and others with originals which are arguably even better than the first wave stuff. Who knows, once word gets around and other bands start playing chicha, maybe someday Chicha Libre will be considered a good second wave act something like what the Specials were to ska. Douglas likes effects pedals, this time using a chorus box to add some aptly watery flavor to the title track from their album Sonido Amazonico (ranked in the top three on Lucid Culture’s Best Albums of 2008 list). As usual, the band couldn’t keep from grinning as they intoned “pavane, pavane, pavane” on their chichafied version of the famous Ravel Pavane, turning a requiem into a celebration. Both their versions of the Clash’s Guns of Brixton and Alone Again Or by Love held pretty close to the originals, while Popcorn Andino (a cover of the silly 70s novelty hit by Hot Butter) gave Electrovox keyboardist Josh Camp a chance to build eerily reverberating atmospherics over the rattle and clatter of the two percussionists, Greg Burrows throwing in the occasional big cymbal splash, equal parts high drama and carefree buffoonery. The best songs of the night were two eerie new ones, so period-perfect that it was impossible to tell whether they were covers or originals (one suspects the latter). Finally, on the tongue-in-cheek Hungry Song (also from the album), the band finally cut loose and jammed out, percussion and Electrovox again leading the stampede. 

A word about the cruise: it’s nothing like what you would expect. Since Rocks Off is independently owned and operated, there are no officious ushers or corporate security goons, no garish ad banners and in fact it’s hard to tell the crew from the passengers, since everybody seems to be having such a good time. Disabuse yourself of any horrific memories of freshman year booze cruises or Cancun. This is a different animal, a distinctly New York version. The boat was clean, there was never a wait for a bathroom, no sorority girls passing out, no fratboys bellowing over the music. Just a bracing breeze and Chicha Libre.

Según cuenta la leyenda, la cumbia es lo que sucedió cuando los nativos colombianos y los esclavos negros encontraron acordeones en la costa luego del naufragio de un barco alemán. Algunos ven su crudeza tropical como el eslabón perdido entre los ritmos lozanos de la salsa y la languidez del reggae. El sonido engañosamente simple, muta donde quiera que vaya, pero su marca registrada es un mesurado ritmo 4/4 construido alrededor de tambores graves y ásperos shakers, con un lento y distintivo patrón. En la actualidad las clásicas melodías en clave menor del acordeón, son remplazadas por las, guitarra, flauta o sintetizadores (la cumbia no es dogmática). El estilo folk entro con prudencia en el gusto popular en Colombia hace casi cien años, hacia la mitad del siglo, las cumbias colombianas crecieron hasta transformarse en elegantes big gands, orquestas. Los únicos que aún aprecian el ritmo tropical en su país de origen son los abuelos (clásicos del sello clave de Medellín Discos Fuentes). Pero, la suerte y las corrientes migratorias del siglo 20 expandieron la cumbia desde la vecina Panamá hasta la distante Buenos Aires. En 1960 bandas amazónicas como Los Mirlos, de Perú, cambiaron el primer acordeón por las guitarras empantanadas y los pedales de efectos, renombrando el sonido chicha, en honor al aguardiente local. Una escalada por los Andes alrededor de la misma época encontraría la cumbia ya instalada en ese lugar, tocada en escalas pentatónicas con flautas indígenas. 

En 1980, los mismos sintetizadores preseteados, las maquinas de ritmo y el fijador para cabellos andrógino que revolucionaron el pop global tuvieron un efecto importante sobre la cumbia. Selena inadvertidamente inauguró el género electrificado, la “tecnocumbia” con su hit homónimo. En México, su mercado más grande, la cumbia puede significar todo, desde edulcoradas boy band y el himno  de Celso Piña “Sobre el Río”, hasta la psicodelia en cámara lenta de las cumbias rebajadas, cuyos practicantes han estado bajando el tempo de las canciones tres décadas antes de que DJ Screw aplicara el mismo procedimiento al rap made in Houston. La tecnocumbia adora las baterías electrónicas con parches octogonales, mientras que los beats sampleados de la cumbia sonidera gobiernan las fiestas mexicanas desde Los Ángeles hasta New York, con los selectors que nunca dejan de hablar sobre los instrumentales. Mientras tanto en Dallas, el bilingüe Tejano DJ, comenzó a samplear cumbia, dando como resultado algo que suena como Miami Bass con riffs de acordeón y voces en ingles.

Durante décadas la cumbia se subdividió, transformando silenciosamente en uno de los estilos más populares en América latina, inspirando a todos desde Manu Chao hasta Voltio. Pero no fue hasta que un joven argentino llamado Pablo Lescano hizo su entrada con teclados ácidos y el slang de la villa, que la cumbia exploto en el siglo 21 como una infección. Cuando Lescano empezó a trabajar como tecladista y arreglador a finales de la década del 90 la cumbia en argentina era aburrida. La elegante presentación y las letras románticas contenían cero rastros del fuego colombiano que había llevado al ritmo tan lejos. Lescano le inyecto realidad, drogas, chicas y crimen con el dialecto de la villa. Al mismo tiempo, su incomodo estilo para tocar el teclado y los múltiples cambios de voces por canción, capturaron la excitación de una salida nocturna. Sin que pasara mucho tiempo, Lescano, había inventado casi solo, un nuevo género, análogo al gangsta rap, la cumbia villera.          

La cumbia no presta atención a los “guitar heroes” y celebra la pantanosa y sudada gloria de todo lo tropical, exactamente lo que Buenos Aires ignora mirando reflexivamente hacia Europa. La cumbia dibuja una línea cultural. En Buenos Aires deben tomarse bandos. Zizek toma su nombre y filosofía de Slavoj Zizek, un barbudo esloveno filósofo e iconoclasta de 59 años casado con una modelo argentina de veintitantos llamada Analía. La crisis económica de 2001 vio descender el valor real de la moneda en un 75 por ciento. La gente con  $100,000 en el banco repentinamente tenía $25,000. Las clases más bajas sangraban, los ricos se volvían pobres. Este cachetazo de la realidad empujó la popularidad de la cumbia villera hacia alturas astronómicas. Pero un bizarro cordón umbilical conecta la negligencia y la libertad.

Aunque la cumbia a mantenido una increíble popularidad en toda América del sur por décadas, su mala reputación significo no cosechar mucho interés externo. Mientras tanto, el género continúo creciendo, sin que nadie respondiera salvo sus fans y seguidores. Muchos jóvenes latinos todavía consideran la cumbia de mal gusto. Calle 13 parodió al género en su álbum de 2007 con el tema “Cumbia de los Aburridos”, pero en Buenos Aires es inútil negar el poder del fenómeno, que se mueve con rapidez entre el trafico en contra mano, metiéndose en lugares donde nadie pensaba que cabría.

Fuera del radar, los cumbieros mantuvieron sus reglas musicales lo suficientemente abiertas como para bailar con una deliciosa libertad. Entre MySpace e infinitos mp3, los fans de la cumbia están consiguiendo darse cuenta lentamente que tan lejos ha viajado el sonido. La primera incursión de la cumbia en el mercado anglosajón fue con la inclusión en la banda de sonido de la película Babel de “Sobre el Río”. En 2007 se adentro aún más en el mercado internacional cuando el productor, de descendencia suizo-iraní, Samim sampleo la versión de “Cumbia Cinaguera”, interpretada por Alberto Pachero, en su tema  “Heater.” De manera simultánea los chicos del indie aprendían sobre el género desde la perspectiva de los guitarristas visionarios de finales de los ’60, gracias a los compilados de reediciones “Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru”. Entonces llegaron dos expatriados de la zona de la bahía de San Francisco viviendo en Buenos Aires, los DJ Oro 11 y Disco Shawn. El duo llegaba de un background que comprendía el rock y el reggae respectivamente, pero se unieron por su amor hacia la cumbia y lanzaron su sello Bersa Discos, con sede en Cali, a finales de 2007. Las barreras lingüísticas significan poco para la cumbia y estas inesperadas migraciones llegan sin sorpresa. Ahora bloggers cazadores de beats y Dj olfatean buscando world music cruda Soulseeking mp3 para sus crates en Serato y mixes de cumbia subidos a YouTube  tienen audiencias de medio millón de personas. La cumbia está llegando desde todas las direcciones. Y partiendo.

On May 2, 1977 five members of Peruvian chicha band Juaneco y Su Combo died in a plane crash. Compounding the tragedy was the fact that the band were at the time the country’s most popular practitioners of the style, a wildly psychedelic, danceable blend of Colombian cumbia, Brazilian and Latin dance music and American surf rock with reverb guitar and trebly electronic organ. Over 20 years later, small but influential Brooklyn label Barbes Records has made a full album of the group’s work available for the first time ever outside Peru. It’s about time.

During its initial heyday in the 70s, chicha – like bachata in the Dominican and jazz here in the US – was strictly the province of the lower classes, scorned by the elite. Because of this, Juaneco y Su Combo were a regional band in the purest sense of the word. They adopted the traditional dress of the Shipibo Indian majority of their native city of Pucallpa and frequently made use of imagery from Shipibo mythology in their lyrics (such as they were – most of their songs were instrumentals). Perhaps what’s most striking about the band’s success is that the various elements of their music were all foreign. The latin rhythm is anchored by traditional Cuban percussion; bandleader Juan Wong Popolizio traded in his accordion for a Farfisa organ, and lead guitarist Noe Fachin – known as El Brujo (The Wizard) was a fan of the Ventures and the Shadows. Like most other bands of the era, another major influence on the group’s music was drugs. Fachin – among those killed in the plane crash -  was a devotee of ayahuasca, a psychedelic common to the region. Perhaps as a result, this is the best high-velocity stoner music you’ll ever hear. As his nickname implies, Fachin had great speed on the fretboard, but his playing can be sloppy and sometimes either he or the band are noticeably out of tune. On much of the material here, all of them sound stoned, which only adds to the band’s woozy mystique. Like a lot of south-of-the-border music from the 70s, the overall sound is tinny, likely because much of this was recorded on the fly using low-budget gear. 

The cd’s best songs follow a formula common to salsa, two minor-key chords alternating on the verse and building to a big crescendo on the chorus which Fachin would typically make the max of. Un Shipibo en Espana (famously covered by Chicha Libre, Barbes Records’ owner Olivier Conan’s band and perhaps the best chicha band ever) is a prime example. The single best song on the cd – written by their late bassist Walter Dominguez – is La Patadita, a deviously murky, minor-key blend of surf and salsa. Fachin’s Vacilando con Ayahuasca (High on Ayahuasca) isn’t the hallucinatory sidelong suite you might expect, but a ripoff of the Ventures’ version of Caravan (a Duke Ellington tune: what a fun and unexpected game of telephone this turned out to be!). On the cd’s last cut, Recordando a Fachin (Remembering Fachin), his replacement does an enviable job of emulating his trademark frenetic, hanging-over-the-cliff style. This cd’s closest relative, in spirit anyway, is German film composer Manfred Hubler’s legendary 1969 Vampiros Lesbos soundtrack. Except that you can dance to it.

Barbes Records – who have a franchise on chicha music outside Peru – have also played a substantial role in building renewed interest in the style’s originators right where it originated, with the latest version of Juaneco y Su Combo (still fronted by original singer Wilindoro Cacique) currently one of the country’s hottest live acts. It’s probably only a matter of time before these songs start getting picked up by American surf bands (how’s that for irony?) One can only hope for continuing releases in the Masters of Chicha series; for now, several other bands, including Los Mirlos, Los Destellos and Los Diablos Rojos are included on Barbes’ seminal anthology The Roots of Chicha, released last year.

What the soundtrack to The Harder They Come was for reggae, what the Nuggets anthology was for garage rock, The Roots of Chicha promises to be for chicha.  Like Australian country music, Japanese salsa or British rock, chicha is a quintessentially urban kind of alchemy, in this case a creation of the oil-boom cities of Peru beginning in the late 60s and continuing throughout the 80s where musicians raised on sounds from south of the border picked up electronic instruments and started mixing in surf music and psychedelic rock. Like bachata in the Dominican Republic or blues here in the US, the ruling classes in Peru scorned it. The radio didn’t play it and it was largely confined to the slums. Where it thrived.

The 17 tracks here are hypnotic and incredibly fun. Some of this sounds like scary surf music. Some sounds like salsa played by a psychedelic rock band (think early Santana without the 20-minute jams), with tinny guitars using all kinds of cheap effects. The beat is like ska but slower, and it swings more, but not as much as reggae. The feel is raw, direct and lo-fi; some would call it primitive. A labor of love created by Barbes Records’ Olivier Conan (leader of the sole American chicha band, Chicha Libre, whose intoxicatingly good debut cd just came out this year), this is the anthology that brought chicha out of Peru for the first time. None of the tracks here have ever been released outside the country, which is more surprising than it is tragic because these songs are so delightful. This is party music, after all (chicha is to Peru what malt liquor is here), and you don’t need to speak Spanish to appreciate it.

The Roots of Chicha includes song by five of the most pioneering chicha bands from the late 60s and early 70s. Los Mirlos open and close the cd on a similar note with tersely eerie, one-chord jams with the same mood as Egyptian Reggae by the Ventures, but stranger. They also contribute El Milagro Verde (The Green Miracle), another spooky, tinny reverb-guitar instrumental which is sort of the chicha national anthem, along with Muchachita del Oriente (Little Asian Girl), a party song that has nothing remotely Asian about it. Los Hijos del Sol are represented by another bouncing, incisively reverberating instrumental as well as two characteristically minor-key vocal numbers, the guitar taking off with the central catchy hook on the chorus.

Juaneco y Su Combo have three songs included here. Vacilando con Ayahuasca (High on Ayahuasca, a native psychedelic) isn’t the long psychedelic suite you’d assume but rather a catchy instrumental punctuated by a woman’s orgasmic sighs! Another faster instrumental sounds like a ripoff of Muchachita del Oriente – or maybe Muchachita del Oriente rips this off. Obviously there was a lot of cross-pollination going on. The third track is remarkably different, with a considerable Afro-Cuban influence.

Los Hijos del Sol follow what seems to be an effective and popular formula, verses that come straight out of salsa, with a lot of call-and-response to get the party going, followed by surfy guitar on the choruses. Los Destellos contribute a gorgeously hooky instrumental, A Patricia, that with a little exposure ought to be picked up by surf bands everywhere, as well as a vocal number and the world’s funniest Beethoven cover. Los Diablos Rojos manage to be both the most overtly surfy and most overtly latin of the bands here, equal parts dazzling Dick Dale tremolo guitar and third-generation Cuban son. There’s also a cut by electric banjoist Eusebio y Su Banjo, the defiant Mi Morena Rebelde (My Rebel Girl) which is more of a traditional cumbia than anything else here. Barbes Records continues to mine the rich vein of classic chicha with a brand-new anthology of songs by Juaneco y Su Combo, available for the first time outside Peru.

If the concept of seeing this stuff live intrigues you, Chicha Libre includes some of these songs in their set along with their sometimes even wilder originals. They play Barbes pretty much every Monday at 9:45ish, early arrival always a good idea.

Este post inaugura no Blog da Cheetah panoramas wikipedianos sobre gêneros musicais caros ao universo da macaca. Pra começar a seção “Um breve panorama”, escolhemos a cumbia, gênero mais popular de vários países da América Latina e que hoje ameaça uma dominação mundial.

A cumbia nasceu na região caribenha do que hoje é a Colômbia, principalmente nas províncias de Cartagena e Barranquila, durante o período de colonização espanhola. Tentando preservar suas tradições culturais, escravos trazidos da África pelos espanhóis começaram a usar sua danças típicas e forte percussão com intuitos de flerte. Nessa época, a cumbia (que tem seu nome derivado do termo cambé, que significa festa) era mais conhecida como dança, já que a música era apenas percussiva – tambores e clavas, Numa segunda fase, influenciados pela música dos nativos habitantes de regiões montanhosas e seus instrumentos de sopro, criou-se no início do século 19 uma mistura tal que fez surgir a figura do gaitero, o intérprete. Posteriormente, surge o violão e o acordeón dos espanhóis, acrescentando aí mais um elemento numa mistura sonora que conquistou no século 20, Panamá, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Equador, Perú, Bolívia, entre outros, cada qual com a sua versão particular do gênero.

No Perú, por exemplo, surgiu nos anos 60 uma variação da cumbia chamada chicha. Basicamente, uma mistura de cumbia e rock, principalmente o surf rock de Dick Dale, só que com uma pegada andina nas melodias. Seleciono aqui três clássicas cumbias colombianas dos anos 60, sonoridade tida como supra-sumo pelos críticos especializados. Na sequência, destaco também duas chichas coletadas na obra prima “The roots of chicha: psychedelic cumbias from Peru”. Por conta dessa coletânea, vejam vocês, até mesmo os norte-americanos tem explorado a sua peculiar sonoridade. Entrem no myspace do Chicha Libre e confiram.

Armando Hernandez – La Zenaida

Luiz Pérez – La morena encarnacion

Alfredo Gutierrez – El diario de un borracho

Los Mirlos – El milagro verde

Los Mirlos – Sonido Amazonico

Até o século 20, a cumbia era conhecida como uma dança vulgar praticada pelas camadas economicamente mais baixas da sociedade. Isso permaneceu pelo menos até o meio do século passado, quando o termo “cumbia” passou a ser mais assossiado a música. Ainda assim, o preconceito aristocrata permanece até hoje, mesmo com a explosão popular que tomou conta do gênero na segunda fase do século 20. Durante muito tempo, seus temas não saiam muito de histórias de amor, romances impossíveis tipo novela mexicana, experiências do cotidiano, enfim, música pop. Eis que surge na Argentina uma nova sonoridade a partir dos anos 2000 através da cumbia villera, ou a cumbia das favelas. Cansados dos mesmos temas e sentindo falta de músicas que retratassem de fato a (dura) vida nos guetos, a cumbia villera surge, talvez incluenciada pela grave crise que assolou aquele país, e inaugura uma espécie de fase gangsta rap na cumbia. E tome música falando de armas, crime, tráfico e sexo.

Pablo Lescano, do Damas Gratis, é, talvez, o grande herói da cumbia villera, o cara que moldou esse tipo de som.

é um show de rock? de hardcore?? de speed-trash-metal??? não! é um show do damas gratis!!!

Damas Gratis – Re loco re mamado

Damas Gratis – Alza la manos

Quem duela pau a pau com o Damas Gratis em termos de popularidade na Argentina é o Pibes Chorros. Reparem como cai por completo o estereótipo que temos dos argentinos – Cadê as louras com carinha de européia? E os mullets??

Pibes Chorros – Que calor

Pibes Chorros – Pamela

Aqui um video com Pibes Chorros e Damas Gratis duelando num programa de auditório argentino!!

Pibes X Damas

E pra fechar, vamos mostrar duas das maiores paixões portenhas: cumbia e futebol num vídeo do Yerba Brava

Só que foi do México, mais precisamente de Monterrey, estado com uma cena fortíssima de artistas de cumbia, que surgiu o hit que levou a cumbia ao crossover internacional, muito por causa do filme Babel. Com produção de Toy Selectah, membro de um dos grupos mais famosos de hip-hop da história mexicana, o Control Machete, “Cumbia sobre el rio”, de Celso Piña, é uma bomba poderosa.

Celso Piña – Cumbia sobre el rio

Celso Piña – El tren (tanto na música acima quanto em “El Tren” os vocais estão a cargo do venezuelano Blanquito Man, da seminal banda King Changó)

Toy Selectah, também membro do Sonidero Nacional e hoje parte do cast da Mad Decent, do Diplo, tem presença ativa num dos discos mais sensacionais dos anos 2000 em todos os estilos, o “Mexican Sessions”, dos ingleses do Up Bustle & Out. Disco que dá um panorama muito bom da cena de Monterrey, recheada de flertes com o reggae, o hip-hop e o reggaeton.

Mundo Insolito – Toy Selectah/ Control Machete Remix

Up, Bustle & Out – Cumbion Mountain

É também da Argentina, através do coletivo Zizek, ou ZZK, que vem uma espécie de cumbia digital que não tem medo algum de absorver outros estilos, flertando com tudo quanto é guetto music, funk carioca inclusive. Festa, selo, e agência (os três beem hypados) com vários artistas portenhos liderados por Villa Diamante, o ZZK produz os sons mais interessantes da cumbia hoje em dia. Por conta do crossover colossal com outros estilos – os Zizeks também são muito bons nos mashups –, a cumbia está tomando conta dos Estados Unidos na forma do label Bersa Discos e da sua festa regular em São Francisco, a Tormenta Tropical. Mês que vem, o ZZK estará representando a cumbia no mais importante festival de música hoje, o americano Coachella. Se hoje já tem até holandês fazendo cumbia, o sensacional Sonido Del Principe, depois do Coachella el cielo es el límite.

Termino este breve panorama cumbiambero com 4 pepitas do Zizek crew, uma delas com uma certa cantora que vocês devem conhecer, e um petardo subsônico do Sonido Del Principe via Bersa Discos. Cuuuuuuuuumbia!!!

Frikstailers – Ta duro kuduro

El Trip Selector – Cumbia del piano triste

El Remolon feat. Marina – Vem que tem

Sonido del Principe – El principe