A question and answer with frontman for the band Chicha Libre Olivier Conan prior to their South American tour of authentic Chicha cumbia. Chicha Libre plays at Niceto Club Niceto Vega 5510, Palermo on Friday 8th April in Niceto Club. The show starts at midnight and tickets cost $40 before the day of the show.
BF: How is it that the band got started in Chicha Music?
OC: We got started when I went to Peru about 6 years ago, and I was always into new different types of music like the Criolu, and Afro Cuban music, and I ran into Chicha music. The mix of music was really amazing, very post-modern in a very unselfconscious kind of way, with a mixture of pop and cumbia, salsa and all of the psychedelia, and so when I went back I shared it with a bunch of people and we just started to play some of the tracks to see what it would sound like. It formed a band fairly quickly. I also worked on putting out a compilation which are the Roots of Chicha compilations, and so between the two I got completely immersed and it became a big part of my musical output.
BF: So, I found out a lot about Chicha music after I saw the Peruvian movie "La Teta Asustada." Afterwards, I looked online and found a compilation of some of the groups with music featured in the movie. So it´s true you put together the "Roots of Chicha" compilation?
OC:Yeah, right the Roots of Chicha compilation was really one of the first exposures of the music outside of Peru, and people really connected to it very quickly. I mean it’s a very, very strong music. People realized it was very real and very relevant to a lot of the… I hate to say fusion, but hybrid stuff people are coming out with today that are coming out now.
BF: Going out in Buenos Aires it´s noticeable the influence of cumbia with the younger crowds. I feel like in bars and clubs you here almost a new discovery or rebirth of cumbia?
OC: There’s a huge boom going on or a renaissance in cumbia right now like in the past five years a lot of new bands are mixing cumbia with electronica. Bomba Estéreo, and Frente Cumbiero are bands turning up all over the place which have a big influence on pop music in general in Latin America and even Europe, and Chicha fits in a little bit in that hole, new cumbia “renacimiento.” At the same time Buenos Aires is kind of the capital of Disco Cumbia, and between the two Chicha fits pretty well in the overall global movement.
BF: So Olivier after you returned from Peru, how it the idea of a Chicha band come together so quickly? I mean did you just decide to get together and start playing Chicha?
OC: Yeah, well we’re all musicians and had been playing together for years in different projects and it started by covering several of the classic chicha tunes and other songs in the same genre using the same principles and writing some solos and we came up with a sound that started to be a little different from the original Chicha .It’s very much a tribute to Chicha and it’s a Chicha hybrid band, you know I think of it as the same as British bands in the 60’s discovering Blues or Cambodian bands discovering rock n roll.
BF: You guys have had the opportunity to play in different places around the world, from Europe to Colombia, how has the music been received in terms of the fans and interest?
OC: Actually really well, because it’s easy music which people might seem to recognize because it has a lot of elements that are familiar from the surf music to the organs and synthesizers and the psychedelic aspect to it. It’s little bits and pieces of a lot of top cultures rooted in the 70’s a lot and some in the 80’s. Some people feel like they kind of know the music but not in that particular order. It’s been received very well in places we didn’t expect but also in Bogota where people know a thing or two about cumbia and it went great so you know there’s a strong recognition of the music and of our brand of the music which has been very satisfying and very fun.
BF: You guys are a group of Frenchman and Americans, is it ever weird for people when they see you playing Latin cumbia Chicha?
OC: I mean it’s strange for like two seconds and then actually the bands changed a little bit we’ve got a Mexican in the band now. I think people around the world now grow up with record collections and not necessarily with their own culture being in the center of it. I mean think about it. What is the main type of music in Argentina? It’s been rock for a long time, rock isn’t necessarily from Argentina and nobody thinks it’s weird that it should be an Argentinian or Chilean rock band. Little by little I think it’s starting to be the other way around. People are starting to getting use to the idea that bands that are from a different culture can use that culture. So if it’s Vampire Weekend using African guitars to us using Chicha to Dengue Fever using Cambodian Rock. It’s bands doing their own thing but basing it on different cultures, not because they’re on some sort of colonial quest or search for exoticism but also because that is what we listen to, and that’s what’s in our record collection. I grew up listening to Punk and salsa,that was my environment.
BF: I see that you guys are going to tour Lima, Peru, Buenos Aires and then Brazil I believe, how is it going to a place like Lima to play a type of music that the people there are already accustomed to hearing?
OC: It’s going to be important for us. We are going to have an audience with preconceived ideas about the music which in Lima means there is a very big social divide. It’s originally pretty much a music from the ghettos and it has a little bit of that touch to it and now middle class hipsters have now listened to the music and it started to get a little bit more appreciated and the fact that a band of foreigners has started playing that music it’s a little bit of a novelty but at the same time it’s a little bit of a pride thing. So the reception to the music has been really tremendous but we haven’t played live there so that will be the real test. I can’t wait, it’s a big step for us.
BF: Is that the way you are starting the tour?
OC: Yes it will kill us are it will not.
BF: We hope it doesn´t?
OC: I mean I don´t think it will I´m very much looking forward to the experience.
BF: Can you explain the instruments you guys use in the band?
OC: We play a Standard Latin percussion section, congas, bongos, and electric upright bass, and we have a electric guitar, and funky instrument called the Hohner electrovox. It’s early 60’s technology with a vox organ in the body of an accordion, and we’re starting to use the idea of various synthesizers also.
BF:So you guys put out an album a couple of years ago, do you have any new project in the works?
OC: Yeah, we have a single that should come out in a month and a half I think, and a full album will be recorded in September so it´ll be out around new spring.
BF: I also read something about you guys potentially being featured somewhere in a Simpsons episode with a Chicha version of the Simpsons theme song?
OC: Yeah the guy who did Supersize Me, Morgan Furlock directed a 20th Anniversary Documentary Special, and they asked a number of people to play the theme song. I mean it was us and some big names like ZZ Top and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And so we ended up playing it on camera. Actually the single we´re putting out is called ¨Dos Danzas¨ and it´s got ¨La Danza de los Simpsons¨ and then a cover of Wagner´s ¨Ride of the Valkyries.¨But yeah that was kind of a trip actually because we did not expect to be asked to do something like that. It was seen by 20 million people so it was pretty big.
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