The Rough Guide to Afro Peru
Various Artists

This is one of the very best compilations of Afro-Peruvian, an underground and more bluesy music genre compared to the better known Afro-Cuban. The music is playful yet melancholic, with rich vocals and call-and-response choruses navigating over a percussion section that features box-shaped drums (cajón), much clapping and barefoot tap-like dancing, and even the rattling sounds of a quijada de burro (a rattle made from a real donkey's jaw bone).

Tracks like Alcatraz, Ruperta, and A Sacar Camote con el Pie are Peruvian all-time classics, and no self-respected coastal would dream of giving a party without them. Includes beautiful Inga by Nicomedes Santa Cruz, a legendary figure in composition and improvisation of décimas (many Afro-Peruvian songs are composed or improvised in a poetic form known as décima, based on an octosyllabic, ten-line structure).

Strongly recommended.

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