The intersection of African rhythms and Latin song have a special resonance for American audiences – it is why Cuban and Brazilian music remain staples of college radio, and it is behind one of the major success stories in the U.S. touring market: the Peruvian group PERU NEGRO. Audiences whose prior exposure to Peruvian music began and ended with El Condor Pasa are discovering the electrifying song and dance ensemble whose last recording scored both Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations. Their 2008 tour is their biggest ever and brings their carnival of Afro-Peruvian sounds to 46 cities on a three-month tour.
The pioneering 20-member group’s new CD Zamba Malató (the name refers to an old chant sung by black women as they performed their daily chores) is the long-awaited follow-up to their last release, 2004’s Jolgorio. It continues the wildly celebratory Afro-Peruvian carnival of songs and dances that trace their history to the arrival of African slaves in Peru in the 1600’s.
“From these tragic beginnings came a joyous artform” declared the Village Voice in its review of Perú Negro’s live performance. The group has ignited a craze for Afro-Peruvian sounds in their home country that has only recently hit North American shores. Ronaldo Campos de Colina started Perú Negro over three decades ago as a 12-person family troupe and directed the ensemble until his death in 2001. At first supported by the government, cultural and political upheaval in Peru made it impossible to tour there, and the group now makes its living touring abroad.
Now featuring a 20+ person touring ensemble that includes members of the Campos clan, Perú Negro has drawn rave reviews from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and others. Their repertoire is as complex, unique and exhilarating as Peru’s own rich cultural history. The group has now become the standard for Afro-Peruvian music, emulated by other groups in Peru and achieving the official title of “Cultural Ambassadors of Black Peru” by the government. They run their own school in Lima, developing the next generation of performers in a junior troupe of dancers and musicans called Perú Negrito (Little Black Peru). They have performed around the world, saving from extinction the African music and dance forms that are related to, yet distinct from, Puerto Rican plena, Haitian voudou, and other African American hybrids.
Perú Negro’s live show features a brilliant cross-section of African-descended styles that had all but disappeared from Peruvian culture by the 1950’s. Those dances include the celebratory festejo, the sensual landó, the slave protest songs called panalivios (banned by the Catholic Church in the 18th Century) and the tap-dancing zapateos. African diaspora instruments also include the djembe (the single headed goblet drum from West Africa), the batá from Cuba, however the centerpiece of rhythm is the cajón, or crate drum, a percussion “instrument” that traces its birth to Peru’s slave quarters where traditional drums were banned by slave owners and the Spanish Inquisition, and now are a staple of most Latin jazz and flamenco groups.
For the 2008 tour, the group will feature new material from “Zamba Malató”, as well as their acclaimed reinterpretations of classic Afro-Peruvian songs. But on the album, the focus is on creating new material that builds on the past with equal parts innovation and respect. Weaving Peru’s complicated past into the world’s complicated present is the genius of Perú Negro, one of Latin America’s musical treasures.
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