Chicha Libre' first release in 10 years is an EP recorded in Mexico City and Bogotá with special guests Son Rompe Pera and La Sonora Mazuren. The EP includes a cover of the classic Tequila! played chicha style, with Mexican cumbia sensation Son Rompe Pera.
The other tune is a cover of Ecuadorian great Polibio Mayorga, Caminito de mi Tierra, recorded with La Sonora Mazuren in Bogotá.
The B side consists of remixes of both those tunes in Rebajada and Rustico mode. å
Started in 2006, Chicha Libre is made up of musicians from France, Mexico, Venezuela and the US who haåçve been at the forefront of a global movement to revalorize Chicha - psychedelic cumbia from Peru.
Chicha was first popularized outside of Peru by a compilation released by Chicha Libre's own Olivier Conan and entitled "The Roots of Chicha." The band started out as a tribute to Peruvian pioneers but quickly evolved into an original project which MTV has called "one of the world's preeminent Tropical Psychedelic bands". Indeed, while they remain true to their Chicha roots, Chicha Libre's music took a definitely more psychedelic turn, drawing more and more from its members' alternative background.
Like its mentors, Chicha Libre uses surf guitar, organ sounds and Latin percussion to play a mixture of borrowed and homegrown sounds, but its music is a freeform reinvention, not an exercise in nostalgia.
Synth sounds, treated guitars, French songs, classical music and pop debris from three continents contribute to Chicha Libre's freeform approach to the tropical genre. The cumbia beats that form the basis of the music are both as inherent and as foreign to them as they are to many generations of South American musicians who embraced a style they rarely grew up with.