- Observer Music Monthly, Sunday 16 July 2006
'Simon & Garfunkel will send me to the nuthouse,' said Antonio, a tour guide in Cusco, the beautiful city of the Incas, nestling high in the crystal clear air of the Andes.
In 1970 Paul Simon added schoolboy lyrics ('I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail/Yes I would, if I only could') to a popular Andean tune and brought Peruvian folk music (huayno) to the world. Since then 4,500 versions of 'El Condor Pasa' have been recorded and are constantly recycled in the city's shops, bars and buses. 'I've heard it five times a day for the last 30 years,' Antonio grumbled. 'People should think through the consequences of their actions.'
I can't disagree, but beyond the industry of 'the Condor', it's clear that huayno, with its Pan flutes, alien rhythms and colourful dances, is a major and lively respite from the daily agricultural grind of Andean life.
Over in the grim, smoggy national capital Lima a different musical furrow has been ploughed. Rock music was classed an 'alienating and Yankee' activity during the military dictatorships of the Seventies. Recordings and concerts were banned, including, famously, a vast Santana gig ('The generals showed some good taste,' recalled Antonio). This spawned a fertile underground punk scene which spread through gigs in Lima's speakeasies and warehouses.
Now hard rock is mainstream, and Peruvian bands like Los Nosequien y Los Nosecuantos, Libido and Dasher compete with Ricky Martin and Shakira on radio stations and MTV America Latina. I watch Leusemia (pictured), who spearheaded the underground scene and reformed in the mid-Nineties with the album Shit to the Others, Assassinating the Myth, perform a lively acoustic set in La Noche club, a multi-level Lima townhouse, and ask a group of teenagers what they think of Simon & Garfunkel. They whistle the opening chords to 'El Condor Pasa', then burst out laughing.
