S/D South American Pop Music

I'm thinking of bands like We All Together, Laghonia, Traffic Sound, Vox Dei, Totem, Telegraph Avenue, Tarkus, Pax, Almendra, El Polen, Hojas, Los Killers, Ladies W.C., Los Mac's, Los Mockers... and so on.

I couldn't find any discussion whatsover on ILM on this stuff.

But here's a gold-plated SEARCH: La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto's Bar by Los Shakers.

search: Demolicion - Los Saicos (the singer completely makes this song)

nice thread idea. I'd love to learn more about this sort of thing

We All Together are really fun

I think Los Saicos were on one of the big music blogs recently, weren't they?

Anyway, We All Together are the kings. They had a track on the Nuggets 2 box set so that's a group that people might have actually heard of. A group people haven't heard of, though, is Laghonia, which is We All Together before they became We All Together. Laghonia's two records (Glue and Etcetera) are just as good as We All Together's two records. Less wimpy, even.

A lot of great names mentioned already, but I'll throw out the whole Almendra axis.. some of the finest Argentine rock. Spawned groups like Pescado Rabioso and Color Humano. Also Argentine, Los Gatos have some great tunes.

Also, TARKUS. Also, Los Holys.

Shadoks did reissues of both Laghonia records; a little prohibitively expensive for purchase, but they got a lot of airplay in the shop when we first got them in.

someone make a mix and post it

Los Holys is a great bandname

SEARCH the comp "Sons of Yma"--Peruvian psych & garage & surf.

oops, and Billy P already mentioned Tarkus upthread.

oh, AND he mentioned Almendra. I get an F for reading comprehension today.

Yeah haha I'm not sure what is left. Most of the good bands I've heard of are in that first list.

This label seems to be doing good reissue work btw.

someone make a mix and post it

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:00 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Well, only since you asked! Like I said upthread, I've been spending a lot of time recently with this music. The reason has been to make a Christmas CD that I make and share with my friends every year. I've started posting the tracks here, the full mix being available on Friday. I'm not afraid to say it's pretty solid, but that's because the material's really solid. The first track I've posted is one from Laghonia, if anyone is interested in hearing what they sound like. (Note that I even included a gratuitous ILM plug/slur.)

The Latin American version of Love, Peace & Poetry is well worthwhile. It's how I heard of the Dug Dugs (who were from Mexico and thus outside the scope of the thread.)

Yeah, that Dug Dugs track is probably my favorite one on that comp.

<i>I think Los Saicos were on one of the big music blogs recently, weren't they?</i>

I 'unno. If you find out which one, pray tell. I've only heard the Sons Of Yma tracks.

The Sons of Yma comp is something I hadn't seen. Both of Los Saicos' tracks I had are also on that comp, so I have nothing to add for you, unfortunately.

Search: Ana y Jaime, "Es Largo El Camino."

I picked this one up off the internets, but I think I've since seen it at Other Music, so I'm sure somebody else has heard this. It is excellent, start to finish. Folk. A little psychedelic, but only in the instrumentation, not really the sensibility. The songs are beautiful & perfomances are robust. You wouldn't in a million years guess that it's by a pair of Colombian teenagers (brother and sister).

Yeah, I got that one at OM. Your description is about right.

Ladies WC I guess you already mentioned. I met the guy who runs Vampisoul and the related labels a few months back and he was raving about Los Saicos, but I haven't heard them yet.

I've only listened to the Ladies W.C. album a couple of times and didn't really like it. Garage-y Cream but nothing special, except it happens to come from Venezuela.

In any case, here is a short thread about them: Ladies WC

don't get why south america seemed to have this massive traffic fixation, though.

-- el sabor de gene (yournullfame), Wednesday, January 12, 2005 5:29 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

not a bad question.

Los Jaivas from Chile

Probably because that's one of five records from the UK that one guy had and everyone just latched onto replicating that sound (see also: Tropicalia and Sgt. Peppers or all those Peruvian bands who keeped trying to sound like Paul McCartney/Badfinger.)

at times i've felt that We All Together are better than os mutantes. but that's when i'm going through a heavy mcartney phase

<I>Los Jaivas from Chile</I>

Yes! Especially the first two records. In the beginning they were more of progessive-folk-percussion-ensemble kinda thing, then went into more straight up symphonic prog territory.

Well they are certainly more consistent, but the best Mutantes stuff is head and shoulders about just about everything else produced in South America (or just about any non-English speaking country) in the 60s/70s.

This is probably sacrilege, but I think I'd rather listen to We All Together more than I would Badfinger at this point.

is your mix title quoting david crosby?

a long time ago i made this mix for ILM. there are a few s.american acts on there.

the Speakers and Bwana are both from Columbia. Speakers are fuzzed out garage rockers and Bwana are kind of a funky Santana cover band (w/o doing actual santana songs).

they even used another Mati Klarwein painting as a cover (later used by mooney suzuki i think)
http://stylemens.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/04/klarwein.jpg

oh, here's that mix (everything's dead on it)
No Comprendo (Jaxon's non-Anglo Psych, Prog, Folk, Funk mix)

there's also a mexican (yes, not south american) group called Kaleidoscope that did fuzzy garage rock too.
Kaleidoscope (US) vs Kaleidoscope (UK) vs Kaleidoscope (MX)

Re Los Jaivas: I've got Todos Juntos, and I love love love it. It's so aggressive and committed. I assume that's one of the first two albums? how does the other one compare?

Re We All Together v. Badfinger. There's a sense of wonder in WAT that I really like. And how proudly they display their influences, it's kind of endearing. And the tunes are seriously great.

re david crosby. Yeah, exactly. there's a story. we got married in a little chapel in maine this summer, and when the guests showed up, we had a band pass out instruments and teach them that song. so the whole wedding party made this big ramshackle singalong which became our entrance music. it could have been a disaster but it turned out pretty great.

Re that mix. I know just enough of those songs to know i'd love the rest. sorry i missed it first time around.

Can I mention again how absolutely fucking brilliant that Henri Texier album that JaXoN pulled the opening track is? Actually everything he did around 76-79 appears to be just as amazing (from the dodgy mp3s I have), but that's the one I found on CD so that's the one I listen to the most.

hey, look what just showed up: Los Dug Dugs

>Well they are certainly more consistent, but the best Mutantes stuff is head and shoulders about just about everything else produced in South America (or just about any non-English speaking country) in the 60s/70s.<

Wow. Even if you're limiting this to psych/garage (as I expect/hope you are), that is still quite a claim there. Brazil alone produced crazy amounts of amazing in that time period.

I got a CD by El Kinto earlier this year that was pretty great, in a gentle Beatles-y psychedelic way. I prefer harder, fuzzier psych-rock stuff, but for what they did they were good.

Presentamos Grupo Haz

Haha okay it's kind of an overstatement. I was kind of thinking both in terms of a) psych/rock and b) bands, which I think is pretty accurate. That said while I don't think the Mutantes are better overall than Gil or Ben or Nascimento (for example) or that they released better LPs than a good dozen or more Brazilian acts, I think their best half-dozen tracks are easily as good.

Los Jaivass:
Todos Juntos is the 2nd one. The first, El Volantin, is more free-form; supposedly most tracks were the the result of editing down some type of jam session. There are a lot of deep, driving percussion & woodwinds cuts on there, interlaced with the occasional howl or fuzz guitar. Very nice album. Shadoks did an LP reissue, so I bet there's a CD available too.

More trivia!

Until I started into this project, I had never heard of the "Uruguayan Revolution" and I wouldn't have guessed it was musical. Basically some groups from Montevideo hit on a real nice facsimile of the british invasion sound and hit it big across the river in argentina.

The two biggest acts were los mockers and los shakers. Los mockers were OUTRAGEOUS copyists of the early stones. they really sound like a tribute band. the guy couldn't sound more like a young latino mick jagger, seriously. and they have some okay to good tunes.

Los shakers were their merseybeat counterparts. Their early singles were big big hits. They sound like, you know, the turtles or early beatles copycats.

A few years pass and los shakers got together to record a new album. they had been traveling, they'd heard a lot more different music, and the results are very special. they came up with La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto's Bar, which i referenced upthread. It's a total lost classic. Lost, because they submitted it to EMI, EMI rejected it, and the band broke up.

I read once in Mojo about some Uruguayan psych band who moved to New Jersey, worked in a pizzeria and recorded an album with Airto Moreira that sounded intriguing, but I can't remember what it was.

i just started typing in country names into the search box on dustygroove.com and have come up w/a few bands not mentioned on this thread. worth a shot. here's just a few i saw real quick

Argentina:
Relax: http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=vfgzjz7rrh&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dargentina%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1

Billy Bond: http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=53btynk9jm&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dargentina%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1

Uruguay
Guayaba: http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=25mryxs3sd&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Duruguay%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1

Opa:http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=tmg3w494ky&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Duruguay%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1

Yeah, I was just googling and that's them- Opa.

that's kind of uncanny, i just downloaded an amazing album of psychedelic/surf/cumbia called "the roots of chicha" from emusic:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-The-Roots-of-Chicha-MP3-Download/11098005.html

here's what the label's website (http://www.barbesrecords.com/rootsofchicha.html) has to say:

Chicha started out in the late 60’s, in the oil-boom cities of the Peruvian Amazon. Cumbias Amazonicas, as they were first known, were loosely inspired by Colombian cumbias but incorporated the distinctive pentatonic scales of Andean melodies, some Cuban guajiras, and the psychedelic sounds of surf guitars, wah-wah pedals, farfisa organs and moog synthesizers.
Chicha, which is named after a corn-based liquor favored by the Incas, quickly spread to Lima. It became the music of choice of the mostly indigenous new migrant population – mixing even further with rock, Andean folklore and Peruvian creole music.
Very much like Jamaican Ska or Congolese Soukous, Chicha is western-influenced indigenous music geared toward the new urban masses who wholly identified with the new hybrid . Chicha is at once raw and sophisticated - and until now, it had never been released outside of Peru.

it's kind of awesome!

tell us more! I had been meanng to get that but hadnt been able to find it (where did you find it is one question)

I know its some guy from Brooklyn that put it together

i saw it at portland's everyday music yesterday, downloaded from emusic today. there's a streaming player on the site i linked above where you can listen to the stuff.

ah sorry. I just didn't read your post properly

Okay guys, I made our South American pop music mix available on our blog. The zip file is 173 MB, including artwork & stuff. Hope you like it!

http://www.howlongittakes.com/images/2007mix.front.small.jpg

SIDE ONE
1. Persons and Faces : We All Together
2. El Pino y la Rosa : Los Shakers
3. Mañana : Totem
4. Jerusalem : Ana y Jaime
5. Te Recuerdo Amanda : Victor Jara
6. Everybody on Monday : Laghonia
7. Maybe I Know : Monik
8. No Tengo Idea : Almendra
9. Siempre Tu : Los Shakers
10. Navidad En El Peru : Coral Infantil Colegio de Chiclayo

SIDE TWO
11. La Pata y el Pato : Climaco Sarmiento y Su Orquestra
12. Mi Cueva : El Polen
13. Profecia : Vox Dei
14. Meshkalina : Traffic Sound
15. Green Paper (Toilet) : Pax
16. It's OK : Telegraph Avenue
17. La Quebra' del Aji : Los Jaivas
18. Estamos Seguros : Los Delfines
19. Stone : Texao
20. Lo Más Grande Que Existe es el Amor : We All Together

5. Te Recuerdo Amanda : Victor Jara

that was covered by robert wyatt, right? i listened to a version on youtube and i dont' recognize it at all. weird.

yeah but i've never heard it. the youtube version that victor jara played that i put on my blog is really, really nice.

here's the wyatt version http://robotsinheat.com/temp/TeRecuerdoAmanda.mp3

listening to them back to back, i can hear it

and just for "fun", here's a highschool band rendition. somewhere along the way the keyboard, bass or drum player just loses whatever everyone else is doing. it's amazing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pAlO2j2_nDQ

holy crap. makes a lot of sense why wyatt would cover his song.

he developed in the field of music and played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric artists who established the Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song) movement which led to a revolution in the popular music of his country under the Salvador Allende government. Shortly after the U.S. backed [2] September 11, 1973 Chilean coup he was arrested, tortured and ultimately machine gunned to death - his body was later thrown out into the street of a shanty town in Santiago.[3] The contrast between the themes of his songs, on love, peace and social justice and the brutal way in which he was murdered transformed Jara into a symbol of struggle for human rights and justice across Latin America.

that's kind of uncanny, i just downloaded an amazing album of psychedelic/surf/cumbia called "the roots of chicha" from emusic:

XChuck and I (and maybe Matt Dimension 5/Haikunym and RS) were talking about this on either the salsa, reggaeton and more rolling thread, or the whirled music rolling thread (or maybe both). It's great stuff (um, the rock, paper, scissors whirled music publicists sent it to me as a cdr).

thanks for the wyatt version. as for victor jara, there's all sorts of spooky stuff about what happened to him. he sort of looms over chilean history

I'm a huge fan of this stuff, have been for a long time, but started when I found the We All Together in a local dollar bin. Appreciate the mix.

No mention yet of Papo's Blues! Great bluesy hard rock stuff, for the most part. First three or four albums are excellent for fans of the genre. Argentine, again. I've only got one of their records but have listened to several more and the songwriting sort of peters out after the first four records IMO.

one of the tracks i put on my christmas cd i took from this compilation (i know that's against some peoples rules) that is well worth the google search it would take to find it:

"Back to Peru - The Most Complete Compilation of Peruvian Underground 64-74"

nearly every track on it is a good listen.

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=csrfcm47t9&ref=index.php

This looks good. Thinking about ordering this, but does any one recognize any of these tracks from other comps ?

I think they're all uncomped, though finders keepers is doing an LP of one of the artists or something? I'm not sure on the details, really. It's a great comp, highly recommended.

I guess Finders Keepers has an Ersen LP coming out mid March, supposedly.

I'll have to order this then. Yeah that Ersen looks ace, FK are always bringing it. I'm looking at some Ersen covers and none of those resemble the cover on the FK website. I wouldn't put it past them to have found some ultra rare Ersen piece, though. Ah, listening to that Ersen track on their myspace and it sounds great ! The snaky guitar work is very similar to the Selda record they released last year. Damn, I'll def have to get this.

<I> I found the We All Together in a local dollar bin</I>

Where the fuck are you located for that kind of thing to happen!?

This little compilation is pretty good, if you're at all interested in the so-called Uruguayan Invasion:

Link.

Been listening to Chicha Libre, the Brooklyn based group put together by the compiler of that Roots of Chicha comp. No he's not Peruvian but the album's not bad (although a bit kitschy at times when it gets too loungey rather than sticking w/ the surf rock)

i know this is spanish and not south american, and honestly, i haven't listened to it, but this looks vaguely interesting

http://heapsofships.blogspot.com/2008/03/canons-tradicionals-catalanes.html

Some mid 90s south american indie...

Victoria Abril, from Argentina:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1iHGhJOAQ

Pánico, from Chile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72xhymCSHdc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL5X35rvHg&feature=related

...and the eighties...

Los Prisioneros form Chile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQgp2ujwF4s

Sumo from Argentina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5R1xexJZw8

Sumo have a great dub track called La Gota En El Ojo

2007 major label (EMI/Odeon in Argentina) CD pressing of La Conferencia Secreta del Toto's Bar by los Shakers has great sound and bonus 45 tracks.

Two of the songs from that los Shakers album, "Candombe" and "Siempre Tu," are on this compilation:

http://www.lala.com/#album/576742227317559079/Los_Shakers/Serie_De_Oro

http://www.thehydramag.com/2010/03/28/eduardo-mateo-a-wandering-folk-enigma-via-uruguay/

Been listening to Los Mac's Kaleidoscope Men lately. It's pretty good, though there are definitely parts that are a little too 'inspired' by Sgt. Pepper's...still a really cool psych record.

Seriously this is great--I overstated the Beatles connection, more like Zombies meets Os Mutantes, and since this came out in 67, a year before Mutantes' first and Odessey, that's pretty good.

Anybody else know this album?

Oh man, David Byrne came out with a compilation of a whole bunch of Brazilian & bordering countries songs and it's absolutely excellent. But I forgot the name - it features an upside down image of a woman, on a beach, leaning far far far back (w/ the aid of photoshop, clearly). Anyone familiar?

they were on this:

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h279/juicyfrt/Lovepeacepoetrylatin.jpg

with two songs: "Degrees" which has become one of my new favorite songs, but which frustratingly has no Youtube video up for it.

This is the 2nd song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf3Bm9ox61I

A couple other songs. This song reminds me strongly of Os Mutantes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3MsoXQPlk&feature=related

dig those machine gun sound effects!

this song stats out in such a bizarre but bouncy way. Almost reminds me of Capt. Beefheart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaSVWUYnUNo&feature=related

*starts

Cool short documentary about Los Saicos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsdTKQb6o6Q