Lima

 

Barrios Altos, La Victoria, and Malambo are Lima’s historical Afro-Peruvian neighborhoods. It’s in these areas of Lima’s periphery that one can find the callejones, those narrow streets where a few dwellings are built around wells, and where, it is said, people would often congregate in the evenings around a guitar and a cajón. These areas are also home to a great deal of peñas, the popular traditional venues much beloved by Limeans.


These neighborhoods have never been solely inhabited by Afro-Peruvians: there and in the metropolis alike, miscegenation is a common occurrence. The ethnic heterogeneity has been all the more striking since the great migratory waves from the Andes in the second half of the 20th century. These “black” neighborhoods do however have an important place in the criollo* collective imagination due to the rhythms and the tunes that originated there. The story goes that it’s where the Peruvian cajón has its roots.

Lima is, first and foremost, the main cultural metropolis of the country. There, the artistic and musical scenes do not shy from the most surprising experimentations and fusions. Listen to Novalima, for instance, to understand that Afro-Peruvian music is no exception to the rule.


* “Criollo” describes, in Peru, the coastal culture, whose influences are both European/colonial and African. It is often attached to culinary arts or music, but also linked to the criollismo, a political ideology that over-emphasizes creole culture (white and black, colonial and Limean) within the national culture, as a reaction to the Andean “invasions”.

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© 2014 Ritmos Negros del Peru : Al Son de la Madera