Alrededor de la Húmisha: La Música de los Conjuntos Típicos Amazónicos de Perú

From the mid-1960s, musicians in Peru’s Amazon region began to record the hybrid folk styles that had evolved over five centuries of European-Indigenous inter-marriage, conquest and collision. Like the syncretistic festivals at which they were performed, the huaynos and waltzes were informed by native sounds and emotions.

This compilation by Luis Alvarado – ‘Around the Húmisha’, in reference to a tree that was at the centre of certain rituals and was chopped down when a pandilla was danced – claims to ‘bring together for the first time various groups… which defined the sound of the popular music that emerged in the Peruvian jungle.’ There’s certainly an untamed, earthy quality to the bewitching vocals, manic rhythms and raw, druggy quena (flute) solos played by the likes of the Conjunto Selva Alegre, Los Ribereños del Huallaga and Los Hijos de Lamas. Insistent melodies and loose, sometimes off-kilter harmonies encourage gleeful abandon, offset by a genuine strangeness. This music springs from a unique source, and the spirit hasn’t been lost in the studio. The original records these bands put out on major Peruvian labels are hard to come by today – this release, in vinyl and digital, fills a gap.