ARTIST: Juaneco Y Su Combo
TITLE: El Gran Cacique
LABEL: Infopesa
Here’s a reissue of the 1972 debut album by Juaneco Y Su Combo, super-collectible in its original pressing and a key marker in the development of chicha, Peru’s unique form of psychedelic cumbia. The band is from Pucallpa, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, on the other side of the Andes from Lima and Peru’s other population centers. While what we now call chicha got started in the late 60s in Lima by Enrique Delgado and Los Destellos, the music has always been identified with Peru’s rural mountains and jungle, and it speaks to the millions of cholos who’ve moved from rural areas to Lima’s enormous pueblos jovenes slums. Juaneco Y Su Combo was the first popular chicha band from the Amazon, sparking a movement called cumbia selvatica (jungle cumbia). They didn’t have to import their psychedelic influence from the USA: the band closely identified with the native Shipibo Indians who made up a majority of Pucallpa’s population, especially with their use of the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca which is immortalized on track 7, probably this album’s most famous song. It’s great to have this legendary recording back in circulation.
TOP TRACKS: 1 3 4 7 12
ALSO RECOMMENDED: 2 5 6 8 9 10
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