This Sunday, José Luis Carballo will be the central figure of the segment “Homage to Peruvian cumbia” included in the Peruvian Fest Chim Pum Callao LA 2022, in LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles. He will have the opportunity to exhibit his ability to interpret a variant of a genre – cumbia – of which he is an emblematic representative.
Accompanied by seven other musicians, who are joined by Gino Gamboa –another Peruvian immigrant, known throughout the world as one of the most productive Afro-Peruvian percussionists and in the manufacture of drawers–, the legendary guitarist will perform iconic songs such as “Cariñito”, “Ven mi amor”, “Elsa” and “El arbolito”.
In a multifaceted career that has attracted influences from the classical music of the Peruvian highlands to cumbia, pop, surfer rock and psychedelic rock, Carballo is also identified in Latin America as the founder of La Nueva Crema, the mythical shisha, a very rough “underground” cumbia. taste – organization that transformed another musician, Lorenzo Palacios Quispe, known as Chacalón, into an idol of Peruvian popular music.
But when Carballo moved to Los Angeles in 1990, he knew things weren’t going to be easy here, even though he had an older brother and friends who had immigrated to the same country years earlier. prejudices against Shisha music had not yet dissipated. This variety of cumbia grape was born among the less wealthy spaces of Lima, the capital of Peru; it took many years before it was accepted by the country’s economic and social elites.
Carballo left his homeland for compelling reasons. From 1985 until his departure, he belonged to the Republican Guard band. As a member, he was to wear a police uniform. At the time, this made him a potential target of the Maoist Shining Path (Shining Path), which terrorized the country in the 1980s and early 1990s and faced scorched earth reprisals from the Peruvian government.
“They murdered three of my classmates,” Carballo recalls in an interview at his small recording studio in Huntington Park. the bag I was carrying. Another, who was a driver, was in a Republicana truck that exploded. And yet another was killed in Ayacucho,” an insurgent stronghold at the time.
At the time, Carballo – who never takes off the dark glasses that distinguish him, not even for photos – had fashionable sound devices that he rented for musical occasions arranged through the generals of his institution, which gave him a respectable popular life. country where poverty rates remain alarming. But his circle of relatives deeply involved with the bloodshed that made headlines every day, and that finally gave him the conviction he needed to emigrate.
As expected, the adaptation to the new environment was complicated, and in the first place he was not able to make the music that had separated him for so many years. For starters, he had to assimilate to some of the Mexican music and cultural influences that dominate Latin music in California.
“I had to put on my hat, belt and boots,” he said. “I had to get acquainted with the quebradita,” the music of Los Bukis and Bronco. And I even learned to play the sixth bass, which has a different tuning than the guitar.
At some point, after responding to an ad for El Clasificado, the popular weekly about Spanish-language business and employment that is still distributed in Southern California, Carballo joined a cumbiero organization of Salvadorans, who were surprised to see him perform a solo; and in the midst of those collaborations, he had the opportunity to tell the musicians who hired him that many of the compositions they attributed to non-Peruvian artists had actually originated in his country. For example, “La colegiala”, written by Walter León Aguilar de Lima has still become a foreign good fortune thanks to the vocal performance of Colombian Rodolfo Aicardi.
“Finally, it was time to show that I can also make my songs, and that’s when the gringos contacted me through my websites,” Carballo said. Organization Chicha Libre and who has released two popular compilations of cumbia Peruthrun (“Las Raíces de la Chicha” and “Las Raíces de la Chicha 2”); Money Chicha, an Austin cumbiero combo made up of members of Grupo Fantasma and Brownout; and La Chamba, a predominantly Mexican-American band from Los Angeles whose main source of inspiration is cumbia peruthrun.
Carballo, who lives with dignity but without luxuries, gets the budget he wants by dedicating himself to the recordings of other musicians, organizing workshops, giving concerts and generating his own material. Perform live, he stuck to revisiting his rich virtual archive to shape 14 new songs he recently released, adding “Ojos Chinitos,” which lately has a video recorded in Puebla, Mexico, and is credited on his official YouTube channel to Joe Luca. Band (Anglo-Saxon adaptation of Carballo’s own name).
He also has in hand a very special commission, committed to the recording of chicheras versions of songs immortalized through Elvis Presley that will be directed in their original English by the singer Carlos “El Greco”. “I don’t know if it will be for entry into the Peruvian market, but it is certainly something very new that can ‘hit’ internationally, because the sound of our cumbia now has a universal reach,” Carballo said.
“I’ve had the concept of doing anything else, that would advance the genre. Fifteen years ago I made the decision to re-record the old cumbias but with a brass section. And it was another because currently, in Peruvian salsa, everything is a copy, there is no innovation and nothing happens with the new compositions,” he stressed.
José Luis Carballo was born 69 years ago in San Isidro, one of the richest (if not richest) communities in Peru. He says it was possibly by chance. His parents had come from the north, his mother from Piura, his father from Lambayeque—and he resided in a privileged community space when Carballo was born.
“I stayed there until I was 6 years old. But then I gave the impression in La Victoria, in Mendocita, a very complicated neighborhood, the Alianza Lima stadium,” Carballo recalls. “I was scared to death. I saw horrible fights, yet I learned.
In front of his house, there was a row of restaurants -which looked more like chupodromes- where they could only listen to the Cuban melodies of La Sonora Matancera, Los Compadres and Celina y Reutilio, while inside they exposed themselves to the marineras and waltzes that their favorite parents.
But that wasn’t all. ” We lived in the alleys, and in the alleys, you can hear everything that happens in the other houses,” he said. “Most of the other people who lived there were immigrants from the mountains who were going to paint at four in the morning, and at that time they turned on the radio with folk music by artists like Pastorita Huaracina and El Picaflor de los Andes. “
Four years later, thanks to a cousin of his mother, Carballo arrived in Ciudad de Dios, a quieter but still populated community in the capital where his brother – two years older than him, who joined boys from the sublime community of Miraflores – brought him to a type of rock little heard on Lima radio. through bands like Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Cactus, Led Zeppelin, Blind Faith and Cream.
“We had a record player, one of those who used batteries, and we took it to a clandestine cemetery that was nearby to listen to the songs and ‘go crazy’, like the other young people we were,” the guitarist said. , in allusion to smoking marijuana. ” The album Iron Butterfly that “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” better for us, because that song occupied a whole side” of the album.
Motivated by these interests and encouraged through the band of the 60s of Eric Clapton, Carballo – still a teenager – founded New Cream, a band that bets on betting covers of Hendrix, Zeppelin, Sabbath and Santana, among others. “We alternated concerts with Los Pussycats, Los Truenos, Los Galax and other bands of the time that came from other neighborhoods, we were the ones from Ciudad de Dios doing rock and ballad.
“My brother collected the Argentine magazine Pelo [dedicated to world and South American rock], where transcriptions of certain songs arrived; however, I didn’t read music, and I got frustrated, because maybe I heard everything in my ear and they don’t sound the same,” added the guitarist, who at the time was educating up to 8 hours a day and fell asleep with the tool in his hands. “After I finished high school, I made the decision that I had to learn, and even though my dad didn’t need me to — ‘if you’re a musician, you’re going to be a drunkard, a drug addict,'” he told me, my little mother helped me achieve those dreams.
After studying classical guitar at a high school, Carballo attended the National Conservatory of Music in Lima, where he perfected his art. However, after building a romantic date with a woman from his neighborhood, he learned that he had no money to ask for it. outside.
“In the midst of all this,” Carballo continued, “during a rehearsal, a guy came up to me and said, ‘You play the guitar very well, but do you also play tropical music?Songs? In two weeks I have a quinceañero, and after that many other presentations can come out, because I have many parents who organize parties.
He was forced to look at Peruvian bands such as Los Orientales de Paramonga, Los Destellos and Los Beta 5. It was then that he left the plastic pick that he used in his beginnings to start playing with the guitar with his fingers. he still does today, as obviously shown by the long nails on his right hand.
“Actually, the use of hands came from before, because there were many things I couldn’t do with the pick, like quick arpeggios. But it came here when I learned classical guitar,” he explained. put acrylic on my nails so they don’t break. There are other musicians [of Peruvian cumbia] who also play with their hands, but that’s because they play in Creole music.
After building a fruitful collaboration with Argentine-born record director Enrique Lynch, Carballo began recording more and more songs, along with conga Alberto “Papita” Hinostroza, bassist Alberto “Piraña” Novoa, timbalero Ricardo “Kibe” Valles and percussionist Óscar. Chino” Siu, who jointly won the so-called “La Mafia” for forming a leading team of cumbia recordings in the capital. At that time he also began racing with Alfonso “Chacal” Escalante, Chacalón’s older brother, who was also a singer.
One of those days, Carballo is intercepted at the exit of a recording studio through Ángel Aníbal Rosado, who has already stood out as a composer of Creole and Afro-Peruvian music but who needs to try his luck in the lucrative cumbia box. a genre in which he had dabbled with a subject that went virtually unnoticed.
“He told me he was going to come out again with a new song of his own; then he took out his guitar, played it and started doing a song ‘Lloro, para amarte, para amarte’,” Carballo said, referring to the first phrases of “Cariñito”, one of the most famous cumbias of all time. “Okay,” I said, “but there is no advent or arrangements. “
When the song was ready, Rosado summoned Carballo and his same usual companions (Hinostroza, Novoa, Valles and Siu) and added up to six singers -adding 3 female choristers- so that the sound triumphed in epic dimensions. With them, in just two takes, he gave life to a piece that will mark the history of Latin American music.
“When we heard the result on the studio’s eight-channel console, we were blown away,” Carballo said. , because I still had no idea what made something successful.
The Lima organization was called Los Hijos del Sol, and with “Cariñito” they have become immensely popular – not without delay in Lima – which did not adopt it until much later – but also in provinces. we still had contracts,” Carballo explained. We were going constantly for almost 3 years, through airplanes – which were not made at that time – and they got us with a limousine. At the dances, we had to play “Cariñito” 15 times because other people kept asking for it. »
When the guitarist met Lorenzo Palacios Quispe (alias Chacalón), Chacalón had become loyal to the bets of congas, even though he had been a singer of the outstanding band Celeste – neither his name nor any photo of him appears on the album.
This is confusing for the mission Carballo decided to adopt with Chacalón after spending countless nights by his side in a seedy club where they rarely performed since nine o’clock at night. at 6 in the morning, soaked in the blinding smoke of other people’s cigarettes. Those very long and exhausting sessions took the place of the week because, on weekends, Carballo went to the provinces to perform with Los Hijos del Sol.
“In addition [in the meetings with the leaders], Chacalón didn’t say anything, he didn’t know how to express himself well,” Carballo said. about 18 years old – in two small rooms. Sometimes he would come to his space in the morning and take him to the fishing port to buy fish, and with that everyone would feed.
Usually, only the wheelbarrows traveled along this street, so, on one of her visits, Carballo was surprised to see parked in front of her a fashion car that belonged to Juan Luis Campos Muñoz, a worker at the Infopesa record label, who has been guilty of the release of some of the most outstanding Peruvian cumbia albums since the early 70s.
Campos asked the guitarist to call Chacalón – who at the time was playing football in a nearby box – and after inviting the two of them to a crowded chifa (Peruvian-Chinese restaurant), he presented his action plan: he sought not only to form a musical organization with them but also to create a new label in which Carballo would act as a producer.
The first song that the guitarist took to the studio of Discos Horóscopos (the new label) was “Ven mi amor”, which would later be a vintage and that, at first, was won with skepticism through Campos. ; you put distortion in it,” he told me. And I said, ‘Yes, because I was looking to do something else,'” Carballo recalls. “In fact, the night he told me he was going to have the band and be the maker of the label, I had a hard time sleeping because I thought that if I only imitated Los Pakines and Los Destellos, I wasn’t going to have an identity of my own,” he continued, referring to two vital Peruvian cumbia bands.
What if I put a very tasty mambito, with a great advent in which the guitar is first blank and then enters with fuzztone?Carballo as an idea of his use of the distortion pedal that is one of his hallmarks in the six strings. ” At that time this effect had already been used, in Los Destellos, Los Girasoles and some other groups; but the fuzztone they used was intended to imitate the trombone, without the background I put on it and its application in the solos.
Carballo’s resolution basic in the creation of the shisha.
“The other bands imitated the Cubans, the guaracha, but I liked to have a community identity in Lima, which meant that you had to merge everything, because in the same community you knew other people who liked rock, cumbia and folk music. In my compositions, there are “breaks” of salsa, rock and even classical music. »
At first, the so-called La Nueva Crema was provisional. But once the businessman told Carballo that there were plos angelesced in the angelesbels of the first forty-five rpm albums (released in 1977), there was no going back. This was not to the liking of Chacalón, who had other ideas. But, los angelester, when Carballo no longer plosaba with him, ended up converting the call to Chacalón and los angeles Nueva Crema.
The dating between the two founders of the iconic group, in which Hinostroza, Novoa, Valles and Siu were originally inscribed, was not easy. Carballo believes Chacalón did not recognize what Carballo had done for him until the end of his life. Chacalón died in 1994 at the age of 44.
“Campos had taken like five dances in norte Chico [in Lima], and he told me that I had to go by anyway, even if it was with the chibolos,” Carballo recalls. “After being in them for about 4 months, we met. again, and Chacalón, who refused to ally with the guitarist he had, looked at me and said: ‘Finally, come and play a very Cuban one, so that you can put salsa on it. ‘That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. “
Carballo no longer played with Chacalón on stage, but recorded with him and even composed new songs for him. He felt pressured by the economic desires and financial deal he had made with Campos, which had given him the opportunity to have his own band, La Mermelada, in which he sang “Chacal” and which followed the same line as La Nueva Crema – which created more confusion among fans.
“At that time I was composing like a madman. I did 4 more for Chacalón and reluctantly he had to rehearse with me and be directed through me while recording. That’s why on the first full-length album [through Chacalón and La Nueva Crema], there are six of my songs.
Without already having Carballo in its ranks, La Nueva Crema – and, more precisely, Chacalón, with whom thousands and thousands of immigrants from the Andean regions met – have become popular, reaching degrees of devotion that, in this case, had their epicenter in Lima. Carballo insists that the fame gained through the organization he founded did not bother him.
“I had done everything, maybe I kept doing it and I did it with La Mermelada, where I had the same musicians [who recorded in La Nueva Crema] and Chacalón’s brother, who had an even bigger voice,” he said. . said. ” We were very sought after in the north boy, and one day we overturned a tone [party] of Los Pakines, who were incredibly well known; the same organizers of this occasion gathered in our house.
Eventually, an unsuspecting businessman tried to unite Chacalón and La Nueva Crema with La Mermelada in the same auditorium in downtown Lima, but according to Carballo, Chacalón did not appear, due to the desperation of the developer and the court cases of those present. Then I knew he had stayed home, he didn’t have to be ashamed of having to share the level with the founder of his band,” Carballo said. Despite everything, the two artists met again several times and even recorded together. back.
When Chacalón died of diabetes headaches, more than 70,000 more people attended his funeral at El Angel Cemetery. It was almost a decade before Peruvian cumbia and, to a lesser extent, shisha were accepted in the high categories of the Andean nation.
The term shisha originally had negative connotations, so the teams that supposedly practiced it refused to use it. “It’s been used for everything negative, not just in music, it represented anything informal, poorly done, ugly,” Carballo said. . ” It’s okay to be called a rocker or a salsa player, but a chichero?However, over time, its meaning has changed. Alberto Maraví, [the founder] of Infopesa, even introduced a label called Chicha.
Carballo the negative use of the word came from the media.
“They had to blame all the evil on the career classes, because the other people in the community couldn’t protest,” he said. They were natural fumaredas. At home too, of course, but not exclusively, nor did we deserve to be told that only prostitutes and thieves attended our events.
“The bad reputation was also given to them because the web did not exist, and people, for example, did not know that I had studied classical guitar,” he added. “When I arrived in the United States, the musicians of a Peruvian friend’s salsa orchestra were surprised when they learned what I could do. ‘Oh, do you write music?’ they asked.
Carballo is fully aware that the existing enthusiasm of many non-Peruvians for the country’s cumbia has been accompanied by a point of confusion that, for example, makes for many of them the term “shisha” encompass everything that has been done in the genre. in the South American country, when, for example, Juaneco and his Combo -one of the most outstanding ensembles- directed the Amazonian cumbia.
It should also be noted that in the early 90s many representatives of technocumbia began to appear, a variant that made an impression in Mexico, probably due to the influence of Selena, who favors synthesizers and flirts blatantly with pop, and for which radio stations were generously opened. its doors
“Why have six singers at the helm? It’s already a natural spectacle,” Carballo said, when asked about the phenomenon, which these days stars teams like Grupo Five and the Yaipén brothers. “It’s something more modern, but not innovative either,because what they do most commonly is imitate Mexican bands like Los Angeles Azules. “
“When I contact Olivier Conan or the other people at Money Chicha, with whom I’ve worked several times, they tell me that my music seems like something hybrid, that they don’t know what it is,” Carballo said.
“I think it’s the result of everything I heard was brewing, adding mountain bands” that fused rock with Andean music, “like Trébol, which from Cusco; the Siderals, of Ayacucho; the Datsuns, from Huancayo, and the Texao, from Arequipa.
“In Peru we have 3 very marked regions, each with its own music. But in the neighborhoods where I grew up, everything mixed up.
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He writes entertainment articles in the Los Angeles Times en Español and did so previously in all print editions of HOY Los Angeles. “Seen
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