Chicha Libre, North America's psychedelic cumbia pioneers return are back on the road after a long hiatus.

Back in 2008, Chicha Libre launched the first psychedelic cumbia and chicha wave in North America with its debut album Sonido Amazonico (Barbès Records). The album was a tribute to 70’s Peruvian musicians from Lima and the Amazon and their eclectic mix of tropical rhythms and psychedelic sounds. The album followed the release of the compilation The Roots of Chicha (also on Barbès Records) which first documented Peruvian cumbia and chicha outside of Peru.
 
Sonido Amazonico garnered great reviews - from Pitchfork, NPR, The Village Voice, El Commercio (Peru), Rolling Stone (Argentina) and MTV - who called them "One of the world's preeminent tropical psychedelic bands." With Canibalismo, their follow-up album, Chicha Libre kept forging its own path with a deeper psychedelic sensibility and a freeform approach to cumbia that integrated even more heterogenous elements. The band toured around the world and proved particularly successful in Chile, Argentina and Mexico.

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Chicha Libre mostly stopped touring in 2016, playing just a few shows in Mexico and Colombia. Eager to start playing again, they released the EP Tequila y Aguardiente in the summer of 2024 – featuring collaborations with their friends Son Rompe Pera, from Mexico, and La Sonora Mazuren, from Colombia. They followed up with a West Coast tour with the obligatory stop at Seattle’s KEXP and shows along the coast including two memorable performances with Los Mirlos in Los Angeles and in San Diego.

Syncretic and cosmopolitan, Chicha Libre's new lineup includes musicians from Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, France and the US and incorporates their various backgrounds into the new arrangements. The music is more adventurous than ever, with hard edge percussion providing the polyrhythms and a healthy dose of improvisation courtesy of keyboardist Joshua Camp and NY veteran guitarist Stephen Ulrich (of Big Lazy and This American Life fame).

Featuring: Olivier Conan – cuatro, vocals; Joshua Camp – keytar, accordion, vocals; Karina Colis – timbales, vocals; Dan Martinez – bass; Neil Ochoa – congas. Stephen Ulrich - guitar.
 

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CHICHA

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CHICHA LIBRE ON KEXP

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Chicha Libre has had had long journey, and it feels especially sweet after so many years to be included in KEXP’s pantheon.

Chicha Libre started almost 20 years ago as a vehicle to explore Peruvian cumbia, which, at the time, was little known outside of Peru where it was often dismissed as “low-class”
 
Our debut album was named after an iconic tune – Sonido Amazonico - written by our good friend Alberto Sanchez of los Wembler’s de Iquitos (an early victim of Covid) and first popularized by Los Mirlos.
 
As we start to play again after a long hiatus, we are thrilled to see that the music has become part of the global musical landscape and inspired countless musicians. We couldn’t be more thankful to our Peruvian mentors, especially the fantastic musicians we got to work with over the years: Los Wembler’s, Ranil, Los Shapis, Los Mirlos, Jose Carballo of La Nueva Crema. And also thankful to all the musicians we never got to meet but whose music was a powerful inspiration - Los Orientales, Manzanita, Enrique Delgado, Juaneco, Los Hijos del Sol, Luis Alberto Sampedro and many more.
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And we couldn’t dissociate our music from the work we have done individually with Barbès Records – producing and releasing the compilation The Roots of Chicha (20 years ago), managing and producing Los Wembler’s as well releasing new music that kept that lineage alive while constructing a new musical reality.
 
Chicha Libre’s music has evolved - while it retains strong elements from our Peruvian mentors, it’s also strongly influenced by who we are, where we grew up, what we listened to, and how we processed all this - we grew up in Venezuela, France, Mexico the US and Puerto Rico - and owe a great part of our sensibility to New York City where immigrants have been playing each other’s music for a good century, swapping ideas, borrowing rhythms and melodies, and creating new sounds in the process.

 

"One of the world's preeminent Tropical Psychedelic band."  MTV