Chicha Libre

“If we weren’t playing it here,” Olivier Conan told The New York Times on a Monday night in the summer of 2008, “you couldn’t hear it anywhere.” He was talking about Chicha, or Peruvian cumbia, a strain of the South American sound developed in poorer parts of Lima as a response to psychedelic rock filtering in from abroad and to the traditional Andean pentatonic scale. The songs chronicled nights of drinking and days of heartbreak. In 2004, the French-born New York musician and bar owner visited Peru and was intoxicated by the sounds bumping out of the boomboxes of street vendors. He came home with a stack of records and convinced his French band to shift its focus to this lysergic party music from another continent. The new band, Chicha Libre, started a Monday night residency at his Brooklyn bar, Barbès, which became a magnet for curious listeners and Peruvian immigrants alike. Conan released an indispensable Chicha anthology in 2007, followed by a pair of celebrated and joyously psychedelic albums with Chicha Libre.

After a decade of steady shows and despite a growing global reputation, Chicha Libre took an extended hiatus starting in 2016, only regrouping in 2024. After starting with a lineup of French and American musicians, though, Chicha returned with a more diverse roster, including musicians from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. On their guest-heavy 2024 EP, they took “Tequila!” on a brilliant ride, the jubilant strums of the cuatro dancing alongside a percussive army as wobbly keyboards howled out the melody. “Most of our music is in minor keys,” co-founder and keyboardist Joshua Camp told KEXP during a live session after the band’s restart. “But you can dance to it.”