As it has been the norm at the SXSW Festival in Austin, TX, the festival continues to open its doors to new and more eclectic sounds and this year, Austin was witness to the ever growing resurgence of the sounds of Chicha, which was showcased by Peruvian band, La Inedita.
La Inedita was formed in 2010 in the artistic district of Barranco in Lima Peru. Although La Inedita base their sound on the original Chicha sound that sprung out of the Peruvian Amazonas in the 70’s by mixing cumbia, Brazilian sounds and surf music, now La Inedita are also mixing it up with hip-hop, rock, ragamuffin and dancehall , which they have renamed “chichamuffin”.
To find out more about the band, we spoke with Salvador Villalobos, the dummer for La Inedita and here we share a bit of what we talked about:
Al Borde (AB) – Tell us about the resurgence of Chicha.
Salvador Villalobos (SV) – It has been a long 10 year process in which Peru has been revitalizing its culture, the arts and the music, and such has been the impact, that even the government has been backing up these movement and the same with the business side and Chicha is only one of those many forms of art that is being supported and the Chicha culture can be found everywhere in Peru, it can be found in the corners, the bars, and it just keeps growing.
AB: Here in the U.S. the Chicha sound has also began to gain popularity as bands like New York’s Chicha Libre and L.A.’s La Chamba have taken that sound to create their music, what do you think is in Chicha that is so appealing?
SV – I think one factor that helped Chicha grow is the fact that is being used as a fusion of sounds, and these new bands are mix Chicha with rock, or even hip-hip and it makes the sound a little more international, and there are a lot of very good bands and the concert audiences just keep growing, now we can see audiences of 800 to a 1,000 people on any given night, and only 7 or 8 years ago, hardly anyone paid any attention.
AB: Tell us about “Chichamuffin”.
RV: We came up with the idea of fusing he Jamaican sound of ragamuffin and Chicha along with rock, hip-hop, dancehall, and all these different influences that we all like, and we just want to make people dance. We want people to have a good time, we don’t talk about politics or religion, we just sing about every day things.
AB: Tell us about the history of the band.
RV: We came together through Facebook, we were two different bands, and began to communicate and agreed to get together to jam. Since the first jam session we liked how it sounded, so we began to play together. At first we began playing reggae, then the Chicha guitar riffs began to appear, so we started to mix in more of the Chicha sounds and cumbia, and a year and half later we began to make way in the alternative music scene in Lima.
AB: You recently played at the SXSW festival, tell us about your experience.
RV: it was a great experience, we met a lot of great musicians and people from the music business and we fell in love with the whole vibe of the festival and through some of the contacts we made, we are now planning on going back to the U.S. to play some shows in the near future.
La Inedita has had over 200 concerts all over Peru and have shared stages with other Peruvian bands like Dengue Dengue, Novalima, Bareto, Sabor y Control, Los Destellos and Los Mirlos and international artists like Chicho Trujillo (Chile), Fidel Nadal (Argentina) and Groundation (USA) and will soon be going to Germany to participate in a festival and they are also in talks about a possible visit to Korea.
La Inedita’s first album, Chichamuffin can be downloaded for free at their official website: www.laindedita.com and the band can also be followed on Facebook. La Inedita can also be found on iTunes and Spotify.
