Chicha Libre

We’re very excited to have our new record on NPR’s First Listen. Stream Canibalismo in it’s entirety!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chichalibre/canibalismo-chicha-libres-new-album/widget/card.html

THE APOLOGY

Money is dirty. No doubt, but as you might have heard already, the old models governing the music industry are dead. While music is now mostly free, it still costs money to record, manufacture and promote records – not to mention to feed musicians. Being independently wealthy is a good new model, but it won’t work for this band.

So we turn to you and beg.

Or rather, we are hoping to sell you a record which will not officially be released until May.

Canibalismo, our new album, is pretty much done, but we now need to settle our accounts – or about $6,000 – to pay for mixing, mastering and artwork. Not counting tour support and promotion, ….

Now, the way Kickstarter works, we have to raise the full amount in order to collect. Should we come short of stated goal, we wouldn’t get any of the funding.

We really hope you can help – thank you.

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THE STORY

While in Iquitos, the capital of the Peruvian Amazon, as I was inquiring about places where I could possibly find old records, a friend told me of a co-worker who had an amazing collection of psychedelic cumbia. He took me to his house, and proceeded to search his hard drive – not exactly the crate digging experience I had imagined, but, you know, the times, they are a’ changing. After some electronic browsing, he finally found what he was looking for: a prized album of Psychedelic cumbia which turned out to be Chicha Libre’s very first album, Sonido Amazonico.
They had no idea I was in the band.

There, in a nutshell, was a summary of this new age we’re trying to make sense of. This new digital world has made it possible for our first album to become a cult around the world – it has also made very difficult to sell records and fund our next record.

Still, It’s been an amazing ride for Chicha Libre. What started five years ago as a tribute to a then obscure genre, has turned into a full-fledged original project which has taken us to a dozen countries, exposed us to new audiences, new ways of looking at music, and allowed us to meet and play with some of the musicians who had originally inspired us such as Los Shapis, Ranil and Jose Carballo of Chacalon y la Nueva Crema.

This coming year looks even more exciting. Our new album will be out this spring, We should be going back to South America and Europe, and then a few more exciting destinations, taking Brooklyn’s own Chicha brew to places we never dreamed of a few years ago.

Our new album is called “Canibalismo” and feature cumbias old, familiar and adventurous, many of which were inspired by the bandʼs travels in South America and its encounters with the various strains of new Tropical music. At its core, the music remains a mixture of Latin rhythms, surf and psychedelia inspired by Peruvian music from the Amazon.

The title is a bit of an homage to Brazilian tropicalismo – specifically to Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade’s Cannibalism Manifesto which in essence says that what we do best is cannibalizing other people’s cultures – and that it is precisely what unites us. And indeed, it is what we do best. Most of the music on our new album is original – save a Wagner cover and two chicha classics – but you will find bits and pieces from around the world – served on tropical platter.

In addition to the obvious Peruvian influence, you will also find touches that owe to our backgrounds (Venezuela, France, Mexico and the US), and our various taste and musical experiences. Mostly, though, it’s dance music with a crazy palette of sounds and arrangements – from Mellotron and harpsichord to fuzz cuatros, surf guitars and homemade analog synhs.

We think you’ll like it, we hope you help us fund it.

Thanks!

Chicha Libre

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chichalibre/canibalismo-chicha-libres-new-album/widget/card.html