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Lima, Peru-based experimental label Buh Records has been releasing reminders of the massive, multi-cultural, geographically astounding South American country’s vast experimental music scene for the better part of the last 20 years. They’ve dropped archival recordings by radical composers such as Miguel Flores and Arturo Ruiz de Pozo, noisy-free rock by Liquidarlo Celuloide, and more contemporary tracks by Berlin-based Peruvian born artist Ale Hop. A visit to the label’s bandcamp page unearths treasures, and expands knowledge of the country’s music beyond more well-known (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) collections of Amazonian Chicha or coastal Afro-Latin rhythms found on various compilations. Instead, Buh has exposed a country that has boundless experimentation on par with anything from Europe or the states.
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So, it only makes sense that they have decided to release two collections of more foundational tracks from the rainforest or rainforest-adjacent areas of the country. Around the Humisha focuses on ensembles from the country’s vast Amazon region. However, what they show are musical forms that had long ago hybridized to included sounds from the coasts, the mountains, as well as the Amazon, which means to hear whatever Peruvian Amazonian “traditional” music is to hear a stew of the country’s vast assortment of instruments and rhythms. There may be cumbias, waltzes, or Andean huaynos found here, all played on a mix of traditional and not-so-traditional instruments such as maracas, guitar, clarinet, quena, and various hand drums. Songs move from the percussion and clarinet blast of the Conjunto Esperanza de San Martin to the guitar, flute, and violin-driven Los Solteritos, who more than hint at the kinds of Andean melodies typical of Peru and Bolivia’s mountain regions. All of these tracks are raw, infectious, and punctuated by hollers from the musicians.
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The music of the Lamista Kechwas focuses on a single ensemble, the elderly Los Abuelos del Wayku, who are from the Lamas Province of Peru’s San Martin Department, a region of Northern Peru where mountains, jungle, and wide valleys converge. Everything in this collection was recorded between 2017 and 2020 by Percy Alexander Flores Navarro and shows off the most hardcore indigenous music from this Quechua-speaking area. A single flute and various drums carry these tunes. Flute lines move in and around the rhythms, repeating various parts before shifting. There’s the goofy polka of “Danza del Raspa Raspa,” or the strange, supposedly rock and roll-influenced “Twist Lamista,” showing that even at its most hardcore, Lamas musicians picked up on radio transmissions and foreign migrations. Whatever the case, this stuff is a long way from the cheesy Pan-flute driven sounds often heard by tourists.
Both of these collections allow Buh to expand on what we already know about Peru’s musical origins, all the while allowing the traditional to mingle with the experimental to show just how diverse Peruvian music can be.
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