Los Mirlos, the cumbia band from the Amazon jungle whose fans are Oasis, Franz Ferdinand and Pablo Lescano

This Sunday, April 12, from 7 p.m., Buenos Aires will witness a dance, different and special cultural event. They will meet at the C Art Media venue (Corrientes 6271, Chacarita) The Blackbirds from Peru along with Los Espíritus and Ilan Amores. A cavalcade of dancing with urban rhythms, but also with the flavor of the deep jungle.

What can Graciela Alfano, Franz Ferdinand, The Golden Triplets, Oasis, Free Ladies and the French musician and producer Oliver Conan? The answer is: The Blackbirds. They are an Amazonian cumbia group from Peru that With more than half a century of experience, they have managed to become cult artists from Berlin to Canada and from Argentina to Rotterdam.. We’ll explain it later.

This is the amazing story of a family of musicians from the Amazon who added jungle sounds and psychedelic electric guitars to cumbia and unleashed a fever that flooded the entire planet. Jorge Rodríguez Grándezits musical director and producer, founded the local group Los Saetas in 1968 in Moyobamba (eastern region). But a few years later he felt that the jungle was too small for him and that he and his musicians should try their luck in the big capital.

“So we came here,” says Don Jorge, from his office/command center in Lima. “We changed the name of the group and in ’73 we were able to record, with a lot of effort, our first long-play, which was called The jungle sound“.

-How did this whole music thing start for you?

-We had a group of young people in Moyobamba, my homeland, which is the capital of the San Martín region. There I formed a group of teenagers, all boys of 14, 15, 16 years old. With my brothers, with the youngest too, right? So we made the first songs, and we played in places like Club Zaragoza in the lower jungle. Then we heard that maestro Enrique Delgado Montes was recording in Lima with his band Los Destellos and we came. So, we also started looking for an electric guitar, something like that to start making music,

-Did you listen to Colombian cumbia, the popular vallenato?

-Something, because we listened to songs from Colombia on AM radio, the signals reached us through the jungle. Radio Caracol, so there we listen, for example, The Dance of La Chivaclassic songs from Colombia.

-Was your house located in the jungle?

-In the jungle yes. There we began to make our first steps with music.

-And there was, I suppose, typical Aboriginal music, from the place where they lived, right?

-Clear. My father, Don Gustavo, played the accordion. And his gang played, his chimaychi (rhythms from the eastern Amazon), his traditional music from the Amazon. And that’s how we also adapted to that and began to translate it into guitars.

-There are two things that attract attention. The first is that almost none of their songs had singing or lyrics, but were instrumental. And the other thing is that they had replaced the accordion with rock guitars…

-Of course, look, we arrived in Lima in ’71 with my older brother who brought us and told us, “Well, we are going to do this: we like music, our roots are jungle and we are going to do something different.” At that time, maestro Enrique Delgado was already making his instrumental cumbias. Back then everything was instrumental. And little by little we got involved. Then we had the idea of ​​paying hours on different radio stations in Lima, every day, to be able to play our songs. And that caught on with people.

To better understand this strange mix of jungle airs with Colombian rhythms and psychedelic rock guitars we must travel back in time. Towards the end of the ’50s and beginning of the ’60s, a subgenre of rock called “surf” was produced in the United States. They were bands and soloists that did not use singers or lyrics, but rather made purely instrumental music. The voices were replaced by electric guitars that, through camera effects and delay, tried to imitate the sound of ocean waves in California.

Names like those of guitarists Link Wray, Duane Eddie and Dick Dale along with bands like The Surfaris and The Ventures (and their English counterpart, The Shadows) produced a real boom at that time and later served as inspiration for the first punk bands, with the Ramones at the helm. Even Argentina also learned about instrumental surfing and garage rock from the great guitarist Bingo Reyna. The fashion spread throughout the world and reached the Amazon…

From day to night, Amazonian and also Andean cumbia groups began to appear in Peru: Juaneco y su Combo (dressed in the typical clothing of the Shipibo-Conibo ethnic group), the Wemblers of Iquito, Los Orientales de Paramonga and Los Destellos, within a long list headed by Los Mirlos. And on the rock side, a seminal band in Peruvian punk was born in 1964: Los Saicos. All those ingredients went into the Los Mirlos blender.

Many years later, at the dawn of the new millennium, a French producer, musician and DJ named Oliver Conan He traveled through the Peruvian Amazon and returned to his Brooklyn studio with one fixed idea: to make a compilation album of psychedelic cumbia, which he titled Roots of Girl. And fury broke out everywhere.

-Your first trip to Argentina happened in 1980 and for very particular reasons.

-Yes, they called us to participate in one of the films of the love saga. Was The beach of love, The tent of love and we participate in The holiday of love. With Graciela Alfano, Jorge Martínez and Las Tripletizas de Oro. It was our first trip outside of Peru and we have very nice memories of that moment. I had bought a film camera. It was in color but silent, it did not record sound. Maybe we filmed that entire trip and a good part of the following ones, because we returned to Buenos Aires several years in a row.

-At that time the rankings of the Record Chamber in Argentina published the sales and Los Mirlos were at the top. You even beat Queen!

-Hahaha that’s true (Jorge laughs and next to him his son Jorge Luis enjoys those anecdotes). The Kaminsky brothers had taken us, who had the Microfón record label. Camilo Sesto and Angela Carrasco also sang in the film. That opened many doors for us. All these last years we have been traveling the world. We play in Germany, in Holland, in France, in Mexico, in Colombia…

-And you were very recently at the Coachella Festival, right?

-Yes, of course, last year. We played two days, and the Adidas people made us some really nice uniforms, they gave us sweatshirts and sneakers. But in the second show we already wanted to go out with our typical clothes: colored shirts with flowers, necklaces and pendants. We always try to carry the color of the jungle with us.

Such has been the popularity of Los Mirlos around the world during the last quarter of a century that they even have their international pop and rock fans. Noel Gallagher, in a report four years ago, declared himself an admirer of this band. And also the Scots Franz Ferdinand, who during their 2024 show in Lima played La Danza de Los Mirlos.

When we heard that we couldn’t believe it -says Jorge Luis-, because also all of Franz Ferdinand’s audience is very young. But it was a very nice gesture from them, as a recognition of the band that my father founded.

There is a beautiful documentary titled precisely The Dance of the Blackbirds (2022, directed by Alvaro Luque, can be seen on Mubi), which narrates the beginnings, the rise and the trajectory that has led them to be considered cult artists. Although they themselves do not give too much importance to that label. And although today there are other bands that try to copy them.

“Because Los Mirlos are original -continues Don Jorge-, They have their creative style which is the sound of their guitars, the singing of birdswe are authentically from the Amazon. Many now claim to be Amazonian, of course, and they don’t even know the jungle.. Some businessmen want to take over the brand. But I have it registered and protected in all the countries I could.

-You have developed a strong friendship with Pablo Lescano, the leader of Damas Gratis, too.

-Yes, Pablo is a great friend. We have even done a nice tour of Europe all together. We had the opportunity to meet him when we went about fifteen years ago to the FIFA Festival, the Buenos Aires International Folk Festival, in La Plata. And after that presentation, the next day there was another one at the Niceto Club, in Palermo. And the club was full and there was Pablito. He came to play a song at the end with us. So, we met him and well, we invited him to close, yes. Then he went ahead to encourage people like he is: everyone with their hands up. Spectacular.

-What is the secret of the permanence of Los Mirlos?

-I would say that perseverance, responsibility, passion for music and also continuing to use that style that we have, which I have not changed, we keep the sound of our guitars firm.

In a few days a new album by the band will be released, titled The World Meets Los Mirloswith interesting guest artists: Rubén Albarrán from Tacuba Coffeethe Colombians of Stereo Pump and the Californian instrumental music trio La Lom. These people don’t know what fatigue is.

-Finally, what would you like the future of Los Mirlos to be like?

-That our music continues to be maintained, because the world has shown me that it really likes Los Mirlos’ songs. My son will have the responsibility of continuing to support it. And later on the day I step aside, let my grandchildren come. And may we all also continue to be bewitched by this beautiful music.