Sonido Amazonico!

Chicha is the name of a corn-based liquor the Incas distilled in the days before The Conquest, and the word's mysterious, boozy etymology makes it perfect for the musical style that bears its name. Chicha - the music - was spontaneously distilled during the culture clash of the '60s when the Indian population of the Peruvian Amazon blended Columbian cumbias with American rock & roll, particularly the twang heavy sound of surf music. With cheap electric instruments, Amazon Indians used the syncopated beat of cumbia as the foundation for melodies that sound to western ears like Andean folk music played on electric guitar supported by Tex-Mex style Farfisa. When the Indians moved to Lima, chicha became a thriving subgenre, but since the 70s the style has been dying out. Olivier Conan, owner of New York's Barbés nightclub and record label, discovered the music on a 2005 trip to Peru. In 2007, he put out a compilation called The Roots of Chicha. The music so captivated New York's downtown crowd that he put together Chicha Libre, a combo comprised of New York's musical scene makers, and started playing the old hits, and some new compositions, to packed houses. Part of the charm of the old chicha recordings had to do with their distorted, lo-fi approach, something that you can't match in a Manhattan recording studio. Nonetheless, Sonido Amazonico!, named after a hit by the chicha band Los Mirlos, is a sunny, upbeat collection guaranteed to bring a silly smile to your face. Vincent Douglas' plays a twangy guitar and Josh Camp plays a rare Hohner Electravox, an accordion-like instrument that sounds like a 70s Farfisa, anchor the band's timeless sound (the Electrovox is an electric hybrid; no air passes through it).

Like reggae, the chicha groove is so recognizable, and flexible, that almost any style of music can be played using it. The playing here has a lightness and humor that the originals lacked, but Chicha Libre's not making any claims about being authentic or keeping a lost tradition alive. They're playing it for kicks, and they supply plenty of 'em. ~ j. poet, All Music Guide

Discover the phenomenonal complexity of music and reflect on the way it can positively influence your life with this sound collection of riveting quotes...

1. "Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below."
   -- Joseph Addison

2. "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."
   --Maya Angelou

3. "Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance."
   -- Louis Armstrong

4. "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
   -- Berthold Auerbach

5. "The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul."
   --Johann Sebastian Bach

6. "Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."
   -- Ludwig van Beethoven

7. "Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend."
   -- Ludwig van Beethoven

8. "Music can change the world. "
   -- Ludwig Van Beethoven

9. "Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
   -- Leonard Bernstein

10. "Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live. "
    -- James Brown

11. "Music is well said to be the speech of angels."
    -- Thomas Carlyle

12. "All music comes from God."
    -- Johnny Cash

13. "If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to know. "
    -- Edgar Cayce

14. "Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically. "
    -- Ray Charles

15. "Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. "
    -- Miles Davis

16. "There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music."
    -- George Eliot

17. "You are the music while the music lasts."
    --T. S. Eliot

18. "We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it. "
    -- Jerry Garcia

19. "Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife."
    -- Kahlil Gibran

20. "When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have."
    -- Edgar Watson Howe

21. "Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossile to be silent."
    -- Victor Hugo

22. "The history of a people is found in its songs."
    -- George Jellinek

23. "Music is the vernacular of the human soul."
    -- Geoffrey Latham

24. "It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."
    -- Walter J. Lippmann

25. "Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind."
    -- Hal A. Lingerman

26. "Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world."
    -- Giuseppe Mazzini

27. "Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously."
    -- Henry Miller

28. "I started making music because I could."
    -- Alanis Morissette

29. "Music helps you find the truths you must bring into the rest of your life. "
    -- Alanis Morissette

30. "Music is spiritual. The music business is not. "
    -- Van Morrison

31. "Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought."
    -- Theodore Mungers

32. "Without music life would be a mistake."
    -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

33. "In music the passions enjoy themselves."
    -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

34. "Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
    -- Charlie Parker

35. "Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside. "
    -- Elvis Presley

36. "It's the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy. "
    -- Lou Reed

37. "The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway."
    -- Lionel Richie

38. "Music should never be harmless."
    -- Robbie Robertson

39. "Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music."
    -- Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

40. "All music is important if it comes from the heart. "
    -- Carlos Santana

41. "Music is the key to the female heart."
    -- Johann G. Seume

42. "The best music... is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with. "
    -- Bruce Springsteen

43. "All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it."
    -- Bruce Springsteen

44. "In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain."
    --George Szell

45. "When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
    -- Henry David Thoreau

46. "For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul's own speech."
    --Unknown

47. "Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us."
    --Unknown

48. "I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a positive thing."
    -- Eddie Vedder

49. "Music at its essence is what gives us memories. "
    -- Stevie Wonder

50. "There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it."
    -- Ron Wood

Resource Box - Danielle Hollister (2004) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine - A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more. Read it online at - http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8364.asp

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