HOLLY WOOD BABEL: Peruano, Africano, Colombiano, Angeleno… Novalima, guey

Did you know that Peru had Africans?  If you’ve heard (of) Susana Baca, then you did; or should, anyway.  They’ve been there since the early days of Spanish colonialism, though never in huge numbers, apparently.  Still it doesn’t exactly fit the image of an Andean nation with an Amerindian culture defined by its high degree of advancement and largely unassimilated entrance into the modern age.  That’s the point, that the races in Peru never really mixed, natives confined to the Cordillera, and whites content to stay along the coasts where they—and their African slaves—landed.

The Africans were apparently even known and rated by their points of origin, something

I’m not familiar with elsewhere, a sort of kinky racism that frankly doesn’t surprise me about Peru, whose coastal whites still consider themselves European and whose Lima-based females are in the forefront of a modern global feminine Diaspora from the Third World to the First, artificial selection based on race and class and looks and bucks, mitochondrial DNA writing the history books.  Those geographical racial vestiges are apparently confirmed by the modern-day presence on the northern coast of (Malagasy/Madagascar) Malgaches, from a country itself not even African in any real sense, recent admixtures on to an immigrant Asian base, and whose languages are all Austronesian.  

At least Afro-Peruvians are finally getting some recognition.  They even got an apology from the Peruvian government not long ago for harsh treatment suffered in the past.  You don’t see that every day.  Much of that recognition has come from increasing international acclaim for the African-based musical heritage, and if Susana Baca makes her contributions mostly in a traditionally European ballad format, then others, including Novalima, stay close to African roots.  I’ve often speculated on just what those roots were like, and I think these guys, and others like Toto la Momposina in Colombia, are pretty close.  Unlike ‘Afro-Cuban’, for instance, the Peruvians never got so inter-mixed with other forms, so offer a glimpse into the past.  Peru is good at that.

Novalima looks like the hot ticket for world music this weekend in LA, a live Grand Performance at the water park downtown Saturday at 8 with Palenke Soultribe, an LA-based group of Colombian fusionistas with modern rap and electronic influences.  Other good bets are the Meters (‘Experience’ of Leo Nocentelli) at Hollywood/Highland next Tuesday and Garifuna Collective next Thursday at LA’s MacArthur Park.  Then there’s ‘Songs in the Key of LA,’ tonight’s (Friday) Grand Performance downtown, library sheet-music archives reworked to modern specs, led by none other than Ozomatli.  

Now I hate to contribute to LA’s love affair with itself, but this sounds pretty good, if for no other reason than the musicians involved, mostly Latino and including I See Hawks in LA, one of the few bright spots on LA’s long-moribund prog-country scene.  I may just step out to get a copy of LA Weekly this evening and accidentally stumble on to the Red Line heading downtown, proceed to coincidentally get off at Pershing Square for a tourist pose at the Angels Flight funicular railway, then just happen to wander up the hill to the Water Court around 8pm as Ozo kicks out the jams.  Yeah, that would be the perfect happy accident for the evening.  I need to get out more.