A third, even more virtuosic style of playing the charango developed in the
mid-20th century in the larger cities of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. The cha-
rango was one of several instruments incorporated into the urban Andean music
ensemble that developed at this time, which also featured the guitar, zampoña, or
sikus (panpipes), kena (end-notch flute), and bombo (bass drum). Building on elements of the mestizo style, musicians such as Bolivia’s Mauro Nuñez, Ernesto
Cavour, and others adopted elements of classical guitar technique and their own
innovations, including faster strumming patterns, right-hand tremolos, and light-
ning-fast finger-picking, to transform the charango into a solo concert instrument.
Renowned Chilean folklorist Violetta Parra also adopted the instrument at this
time, setting her own compositions to charango accompaniment and influencing
a later generation of Chilean nueva canción (new song) musicians to take up the
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Rock
instrument, who would popularize it around the world during their tours in the
1970s and 1980s.
In recent years, the charango has continued to grow in popularity, and is now
commonly played in urban folk and popular musics throughout Andean South
America. It has also been featured in a number of high-profile popular music re-
cordings internationally, including songs by Shakira and by the Argentine producer
and Oscar-winning film composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
Further Reading
Rios, Fernando. “Music in Urban La Paz, Bolivian Nationalism, and the Early History
of Cosmopolitan Andean Music: 1936–1970.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, 2005.
Stobart, Henry. Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes. London:
Ashgate, 2006.
Turino, Thomas. “The Charango and the ‘Sirena’: Music, Magic, and the Power of
Love.” Latin American Music Review 4, no. 1 (1983): 81–119.
Turino, Thomas. “The Urban-Mestizo Charango Tradition in Southern Peru: A State-
ment of Shifting Identity.” Ethnomusicology 28, no. 2 (1984): 253–70.
Jonathan Ritter
Chicano Rock
Chicano rock refers to rock music played by Mexican Americans. The term does
not imply a specific unifying style because Chicano artists have approached rock
music in diverse ways, reflecting their regional experiences with Anglo and African
American communities. Its roots began around 1950 when Chicano artists in south
Texas and southern California modeled themselves after African American rhythm
and blues artists. In the 1970s, Chicano artists openly celebrated their ethnic iden-
tity, which produced a unique hybrid style of rock music. By the 1990s, Chicano
rock continued to diversify into many styles.
While conjunto and orquesta ensembles were popular in the 1950s in Texas, many Chicanos also liked jazz and rhythm and blues. In 1954 members of San
Antonio’s Conjunto Mexico formed the band Mando & the Chili Peppers. The
band had its own show on local television and in 1957 released the album On
the Road with Rock ‘n’ Roll. From San Benito, Freddy Fender recorded his first
rock ‘n’ roll songs in 1957, including a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t be Cruel”
sung in Spanish. In 1959 Fender’s song “Holy One” became a regional hit. By
the mid-1960s, a unique style known as the “West Side Sound” emerged in San
Chicano
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Antonio, which combined elements of rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop,
soul, and tejano music. Two popular bands were The Royal Jesters and Sunny &
the Sunliners. From Dallas, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs hit the charts in 1965
with “Wooly Bully,” a song that introduced Tex-Mex flavored rock ‘n’ roll to
mainstream audiences.
In the 1950s in Los Angeles a number of Chicano musicians honed their skills
playing jazz and rhythm & blues before switching to rock ‘n’ roll. Artists include
The Armenta Brothers, Bobby Rey, Gil Bernal, The Rhythm Rockers, and the
beloved Ritchie Valens. In the early 1960s a scene known as the Eastside Sound
emerged in Los Angeles. Many of these bands such as The Romancers, The
Blendells, and The Premiers recorded under Eddie Davis and Billy Cardenas. The
two most popular bands were Cannibal & the Headhunters, well-known for their
version of “Land of a Thousand Dances,” and Thee Midniters, whose 1965 release
“Whittier Boulevard” unified soul, gospel, surf rock, jazz, and Latin elements into
a new sound that future bands followed.
Mexican Americans’ efforts to improve their position in American society,
termed the “Chicano Movement,” marked a new consciousness in the 1960s that
later emerged in Chicano rock in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Unlike previous artists, bands of the 1970s drew attention to their Mexican heritage
by using imagery from Mexican culture, singing in Spanish, and celebrating Chi-
cano life through their lyrics. The music drew heavily from jazz, rhythm and blues,
Mexican music, and Latin dance music, all mixed with a rock approach. In Los
Angeles, two of the most popular bands, El Chicano and Tierra, grew out of earlier
Eastside Sound bands. El Chicano achieved national recognition in 1970 with their
song “Viva Tirado.” The same year, Rudy and Steve Salas founded Tierra, a band
that achieved commercial success in 1980 with their cover song “Together.” Other
important bands include Macondo, Tango, Yaqui, Redbone, and Ruben & the Jets.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Carlos Santana help create Latin rock when the
band named after him combined Latin, blues, rock, African drumming, and psyche-
delic jams at their monumental 1969 performance at Woodstock. Other multieth-
nic bands followed Santana’s lead while adding more Chicano references to their
music. Malo, whose song “Suavecito” was a hit in 1972, included Carlos Santana’s
brother Jorge and Willie G. of Thee Midniters. Former member Coke Escovedo
later formed Azteca and Richard Bean formed Sapo.
As younger Chicano artists wanted to be more directly political, they turned to
punk rock. By the 1980s, Club Vex in Los Angeles was a hub for Chicano bands
like The Zeros, The Brat, The Bags, Los Illegals, and The Plugz. Other Chicano
punk scenes emerged in the 1990s in Chicago and Texas. Presently, Chicano rock
bands like Los Lobos, Quetzal, Girl in a Coma, and Los Lonely Boys represent a
wide range of styles and innovative mixtures.
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Further Reading
Molina, Ruben. Chicano Soul: Recordings and History of an American Culture. La Pu-
ente, CA: Mictlan, 2007.
Reyes, David, and Tom Waldman. Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock‘n’Roll
from Southern California. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Francisco Orozco
Chicha
Chicha, also known as cumbia andina, is a Peruvian popular music genre that fuses
influences from the Colombian cumbia , the Andean huayno , and transnational pop/rock instrumentation. Chicha emerged as a distinctive genre in Peru in the late
1960s, and reached the heig
ht of its popularity in the 1980s. Associated primar-
ily with the poorer marginal neighborhoods founded by highland migrants to the
capital city, Lima, chicha nonetheless had a significant following in most of the
country’s major cities. Though its popularity waned in the 1990s, chicha groups
continue to attract large audiences today, within Peru as well as beyond the coun-
try’s borders in neighboring South American countries.
Cumbia first established a following in Peru in the 1960s, appealing to an unusu-
ally broad cross-section of the population in terms of both class and ethnic identity
and geographic dispersion. Covers of Colombian cumbias were performed by di-
verse ensembles, from vocal soloists in the country’s capital to brass bands in rural
parts of the Andean highlands, and eventually gave birth to Peruvian variations on
the genre. Los Destellos, founded in Lima by guitarist Enrique Delgado in 1968,
is widely regarded as one of the most influential early bands. Their instrumental
line-up—including two electric guitars, electric bass, and timbals, later expanded
to incorporate congas, bongos, and keyboard—as well as Delgado’s melodic, riff-
based style of guitar playing established an instrumental model and characteristic
sound that continues to define the genre to this date.
Rapid urbanization in Peru during the mid-20th century led to tremendous eco-
nomic and cultural changes in cities such as Lima and Arequipa, where the particu-
lar form of Peruvian cumbia known as chicha developed. First-generation migrants
in the 1950s and 1960s had established a thriving recording industry and perfor-
mance circuit for commercial versions of the highland huayno, a double-meter
music and dance genre widespread throughout the Andean highlands of Peru and
Bolivia. By the early 1980s, children of those migrants began incorporating me-
lodic influences—and at times, entire songs—from the huayno repertoire into the
rhythms and tropical instrumentation of the Peruvian cumbia. Though coastal and
jungle versions of the cumbia persisted in different parts (and demographics) of
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the country, chicha, or cumbia andina (Andean cumbia), dominated the listening habits of urban provincianos (provincial migrants). Chicha, referring to a type of
homemade corn beer drunk throughout the Andes, also cemented the highland as-
sociations of the subgenre; the word’s association with this music reportedly began
with one of its early hits, “La Chichera” (“The Chicha Seller”), by the group Los
Demonios del Mantaro, from Peru’s central Mantaro Valley. Today, the word’s as-
sociation with this music has also made it synonymous, in a derogatory way, with
anything deemed cheap or low class in Peru.
Shunned by more traditional media outlets such as television and radio in the
1980s, chicha musicians carved out an alternate media space among working-class
migrant audiences through live performances in outdoor venues in poorer neighbor-
hoods, sometimes called chichodromos, as well as through widespread distribution
of their music via pirated cassettes. The genre’s biggest and most enduring success
in these realms was the band Los Shapis, founded by guitarist Jayme Moreyra and
singer Julio Edmundo “Chapulín” Simeon in Lima in 1981. They had their first hit
with “El Aguajal,” an adaptation of a popular huayno, which was followed by a
long string of hits in the following decade that reflected the lives and concerns of
their predominantly urban, provinciano audience. Indeed, one characteristic feature
of the genre, and of Los Shapis in particular, was an emphasis on simple and di-
rect lyric messages, in contrast with the poetic flourishes of other Peruvian genres
such as the huayno and the Creole vals. The singer “Chacalón” (Lorenzo Palacios) was also a major star of the decade. His unexpected death in 1992 drew more than
20,000 people into the streets to follow his casket through the working-class mi-
grant neighborhoods where he had made his name.
Chicha’s popularity faded to some extent in the 1990s, as its novelty waned and
the genre faced heightened competition for urban audiences’ attention in the coun-
try’s increasingly diverse media market. By the end of the decade, chicha was over-
shadowed by techno-cumbia, another local variation on the cumbia which dropped
chicha’s Andean influences, updated its sound, and featured primarily female sing-
ers and dancers. Nonetheless, chicha has endured into the new millennium. Many
of the popular bands of the 1980s continue to perform and record regularly, and
their earlier hits remain widely available. Television miniseries based on the lives
of iconic singers Chacalón and Chapulín were major hits in recent years, appeal-
ing to audiences far beyond their prior core fan base, and point to the genre’s con-
tinued longevity.
Further Reading
Bullen, Margaret. “Chicha in the Shanty Towns of Arequipa, Peru.” Popular Music 12,
no. 3 (1993): 229–44.
Hurtado Suárez, Wilfredo. Chicha Peruana: Música de los Nuevos Migrantes. Lima:
Grupo de Investigaciones Económicas, 1995.
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Montoya, Rodrigo. “Música Chicha: Cambios de la Canción Andina Quechua en el
Perú.” In Cosmología y Música en los Andes, edited by Max Peter Baumann, 483–95. Ver-
vuert: Iberoamericana, 1996.
Romero, Raul. 2002. “Popular Music and the Global City: Huayno, Chicha, and Techno-
Cumbia in Lima.” In From Tejano to Tango, edited by Walter Aaron Clark, 217–39. New
York: Routledge, 2002.
Turino, Thomas. “Somos el Perú [We are Peru]: Cumbia Andina and the Children of
Andean Migrants in Lima.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 9 (1990): 15–38.
Jonathan Ritter
Chile
Chile is situated on the Pacific coast of South America, bordered by Argentina,
Bolivia, and Peru. The population of Chile is over 95 percent white and mes-
tizo, while 4 percent of the people are Mapuche Indians. As a result, Chilean
popular music has been largely influenced by traditional and as well as foreign
styles.
In the 19th century, the most popular genres were associated with Creole dances
or bailes de tierra, of which there are three types: bailes serios such as rin, contradanza, churré, vals , gavota, and cuadrillas, which were mainly performed in aristocratic gatherings; bailes de chicoteo such as zamba , fandango, and cachu-cha; and finally a third type including the genres cielito, pericón, sajuriana, perdiz,
and campana, which mixes the characters of the two former categories. Bailes se-
rios and bailes de chicoteo were introduced in Chile in approximately 1817 by the
Army of the Andes.
In the 20th century, traditional genres such as cueca , tonada, and vals were widely distributed in the 1920s and 1930s through música típica ensembles such as
Los Cuatro Huasos, Los Huasos Quincheros, and Los Provincianos. These groups
evoked the folklore of central Chile by dressing such as huasos (Chilean cowboys).
Cueca, tonada, vals, and other traditional Chilean genres like canción, mapuchina,
pericona, sirilla, refalosa, cachimbo, and trote circulated in the 1960s and 1970s,
and develope
d in various movements such as neofolklore, nueva canción, and canto nuevo. Music from other Latin American countries, especially Argentina,
Mexico, and Cuba, was widely circulated in Chile during the 1930s. Urban and
rural styles such as tango , Peruvian vals, maxixe , samba , rumba , conga , guara-
cha , balada , corrido , boleros , cumbia , marcha, and ranchera were broadcasted via radio, films and recordings. Styles originated in the United States, particularly
foxtrot, jazz, rock, pop and fusion, exerted a strong influence in Chilean popular
music beginning in the 1950s.
Chile | 91
Parra, Violeta
Violeta Parra (1917–1967) was a Chilean songwriter, performer, folk music
compiler, and graphic artist. She played a key role in the resurgence of folk
music in Latin America in the 1950s and in the subsequent development of the
nueva canción movement. Her work was inspired by diverse folk music tra-
ditions, achieving a great popularity through mass distribution.
Parra became popular in the 1950s, particularly with her songs “Casamiento
de negros” and “Qué pena siente el alma.” In 1954, she traveled to the Soviet
Union, Germany, and Italy before moving to France, where she lived for two
years. In 1957 she worked for the University of Concepción in Chile, where-
upon she founded and managed the Museo de Arte Popular. Back in Paris in 1961,
Parra continued recording and preparing art exhibitions. She performed at the
United Nations and at UNESCO. Her paintings, arpilleras (tapestries), and wire
sculptures were displayed at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Upon her
return to Chile in 1965, she set up a circus tent in La Reina (a neighborhood
in Santiago) to promote Chilean popular culture. Parra committed suicide at
the age of 49.
Further Reading
Morales T., Leonidas. Violeta Parra: la última canción. Santiago de Chile: Editorial
Cuarto Propio, 2003.
Katia Chornik
Nueva canción Chilena (Chilean New Song) came to light in the 1960s during
a period of political struggle across Latin America, becoming associated with left-
wing political activism (see Protest Song in Latin America ). The roots of nueva
canción are found in the work of artists such as Violeta Parra and Atahualpa
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 18