Various Artists, 'The Roots of Chicha 2'

January 03, 2011

It’s been three years since chicha — the funky collision of cumbia, rock ’n’ roll, and Andean rhythms — finally rippled beyond its Peruvian borders. Barbès, a record label extension of the Brooklyn bar of the same name, gave the little-known music a much broader audience with “The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru.’’ The compilation was successful enough to spawn an entire collection by Juaneco y su Combo, one of the featured bands, and now we have a second volume of various artists. If the music itself isn’t radically different on this new edition, it’s still completely hypnotic — and a window into cultural shifts afoot in Latin American music in the 1960s and ’70s. The lineup is more varied this time around, featuring 11 different bands injecting their songs with a hit of acid (never has surf guitar sounded so fierce). “Paga la Cuenta Sinvergüenza,’’ by Manzanita, is particularly amusing, a scolding tale of a man dressed down by his lady for his drunken ways. Some of the other tracks are so down and dirty, you half expect James Brown to suddenly take the mike and belt a few bars in Spanish. (Out now) JAMES REED

ESSENTIAL “Cumbia del Desierto’’

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