Thursday, March 21, 2013

South American Trip!

This post has been at the back of my mind for a long time. I wanted to write something about psychedelic music from South America from different eras (because there's just plenty of it for some reason), make it well-documented, complete, insightful, and of course what it meant is that I kept postponing it and not doing anything about it. It felt like work.

So screw that! Let's just pretty much dump the videos in here for now, just to give you an idea of the amount of obscure gems waiting to be discovered.

Let's start with what gave me the idea for the post in the first place: Chicha! Originally the name of some fermented beverage made in various regions of South America, it also became the name of a weird Peruvian musical genre that combines cumbia with... wait for it... surf music! Here's a typical example, by one of the early bands that played the genre, Los Destellos:



A recent compilation, aptly named The Roots of Chicha, gives us some of the best the genre has to offer. Here's one that you just gotta love:



A recent group called Chicha Libre (ahem), with participation from some French musicians, gives us a more modern (and maybe less interesting?) interpretation of the genre. Here's a Chicha version of Joe Dassin's "L'ete indien" :



But let's move on from Peru... My favorite discovery of the year, Meridian Brothers, comes from Colombia! Despite the name, it's a one man affair. Eblis Alvarez is possible the John Frusciante of the Latin American world, and is very much active. Here's one of his recent songs:



(WE ARE NOT ALONE!)

But, the diligent EasyTV viewer is bound to ask: what about Brazil? Don't expect me to talk about Os Mutantes and the whole Tropicalia movement, I've mentioned it here before, and frankly it's not all that obscure, is it? So let me tell you instead about Tim Maia, apparently a God of Funk at home but at least unknown to me until very recently. So let's transport ourselves to the mid 70s, and let's make sweeeeeeet looooove to this music:



(apparently the song can be heard on the City of God soundtrack. Haven't seen the movie.)

To finish things off, let's go to Venezuela. OK, not quite: this is a London-based band, but the singer, Luzmira Zerpa, is from there. In any case, it looks pretty cool live:



I also had something from Chile, but I can't find it right now, and there was a band from Argentina that had an awesome album cover but the music turned out to be pretty lame, and their name is Catupecu Machu.

So there you go, hope that's better than nothing.

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