EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 17 - Cumbia peruana

Genre of the Day - Cumbia peruana

Album of the Day - El gran calcique by Juaneco y su Grupo (1974)

Today is a very special day on the Every Genre Project! As a particular aficionado of the country of Peru thanks to someone special I know, I’m honored to be presenting our first genre hailing from the iconic nation. And again, I am writing this from my hostel bed, in my notes app to reduce noise, swatting away a devilish mosquito every eleven seconds. But this will be the last such semi-rushed entry, do not fear. 

Cumbia is one of those helpful umbrella terms in the world of music genres that upon further examination falls apart at the seams a bit as one consistent tradition, though it’s sometimes described as one. It’s basically a broad term for a variety of musical traditions across Latin America that typically combine elements of indigenous, African, and European music into one thoroughly danceable whole. Its distinctive rhythm is characterized by a percussion instrument called a guacharacha as well as other drums. 

Particularities mostly depend on where you are; it’s such a nebulous term given the sheer variety of influences and traditions across the Latin music sphere that it barely begins to cover it. Even within cumbia peruana there's a high level of regional variety. Peru, after all, is home to the tremendously soaring Andes, a large swathe of Amazonian rainforest, desert, and an expansive coast, so understandably these wide distances beget considerable differentiation even within one nation.

With the 1960s and the popularization of the electric guitar in Peru, the sound of cumbia was revolutionized with it. Hailing from the eastern Amazonian city of Pucallpa, Juaneco represents both a musically innovative future in his moment as well as Peru’s multiethnic past as someone of mixed native and Chinese descent. Synthesizing psychedelic elements into his vision of cumbia, Juaneco y su Combo bring in slick, perpetually unfolding surf rock guitar licks and organ, going wild with riffs and counter melodies with the anchor of the cumbia rhythm to keep them from flying out of orbit. The countermelodies of “El Capullito” particularly stood out to me before the psychedelic-fueled raunchiness of “Vacilando Con Ayahuasca.” Far from the sea but deep in the rainforest, Juaneco and his group’s ability to seamlessly fuse international guitar trends and push cumbia amazonia and cumbia Peruana as a whole forward is a metaphor for the diverse country itself: taking influence from both its thousands of years of proud ancient history and glorious civilizations to its multiethnic present and future. No wonder its restaurants are gaining Michelin stars like power ups.