Robin Denselow 

Juaneco Y Su Combo: The Birth of Jungle Cumbia – review

Cuban influences and cumbia styles meet wailing psych-rock guitar on this rare 1970s recording from Amazonian Peru, writes Robin Denselow
  
  

Juaneco Y Su Combo album cover
The sound of the 1970s Amazon … Juaneco Y Su Combo Photograph: PR

This is the band who shook up Peru back in the early 1970s. Juaneco Y Su Combo came from Pucallpa, out in the Amazon jungle in the east of the country, dressed in parrot-feather headgear and cotton tunics like the local Shipibo people, but the band's self-composed songs matched Latin rhythms with rock influences. These were the first recordings they made, mixing their own brand of Colombian cumbia styles with Cuban influences, insistent quirky keyboard riffs and wailing psychedelic guitar work. The sound quality is not brilliant (the original tapes have been lost and these recordings were taken from rare vinyl copies) but the energy and enthusiasm is impressive. There are songs based on the folk myths of the Amazon, about oil prospectors, and a lament for victims of an air disaster. Sadly, five members of the band were themselves killed in a plane crash in 1977.

 

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