Whisper it quietly around your friends from Mexico City or São Paulo, but Lima might be the new hub of electronic music in Latin America. Recently, the Peruvian capital has muscled its way to the vanguard of the giddy mashup of popular regional styles and externally-sourced club beats known as tropical bass, not on merely a continental level, but a worldwide one as well. The global global bass scene if you like. Its scope is broad.
Following the nu-chicha wave, which saw the classic 60s limeño sound of Afro-Peruvian rhythms and surf guitar given a new lease of life by groups like Chicha Libre, and subsequently by local musicians who realized the potential for its incorporation into the looping hypnosis of underground rave culture, global bass entwines the club sound with the same fervent melodies that led to the chicha explosion back in the day. Under this cross-generational musical focus, Lima has become something of a Mecca for electronic music connoisseurs, with the emergence of crews, promoters, and parties under the banners of Mototaxi Producciones, Vulvo, and Colectivo Auxiliar, which spawned Dengue Dengue Dengue! These collectives have played a major role in the rise of global bass in Peru and Latin America.
A compilation album released earlier this year brings together the king-and-queen-pins who have helped elevate Lima to international prominence. Peru Boom is the brainchild of DJ Chakruna of Mototaxi Producciones, and London-based label Tiger’s Milk Records. Alongside Chakruna, featured names include Animal Chuki, Elegante & La Imperial, and Deltatron, with the aim of creating a platform for these artists to thump their way into the consciousness of audiences further afield.
To celebrate Peru Boom, we’re happy to bring you a short documentary that will give you an inside look at what you can expect from the compilation. Needless to say, there’s a lot of bass.