Chicha is a late-1960s Peruvian city music that lays a Colombian cumbia 2/4 dance foundation, adds a spring-reverbed electric guitar borrowed from Texan surf rock, and inflects the melody with Andean pentatonic phrasing. Vocals are Spanish, usually a male lead singing about migration, poverty, and homesickness. The band is two electric guitars, electric bass, drum kit, congas, timbales, occasional trumpet and keyboard. Tempos sit at 100–115 BPM. The guitar tone is the giveaway — closer to the Ventures than to anything Colombian.

Los Mirlos, formed in the Amazonian oil-boom town of Pucallpa in 1970, combined imported Colombian cumbia with distorted electric guitars, and Los Destellos in Lima worked the same fusion in parallel. Together they invented cumbia amazónica. Chacalón y La Nueva Crema — fronted by Lorenzo Palacios (1950–1994), from a Lima slum — became the voice of the millions who had migrated from the Andes to Lima's shantytowns (barriadas) from the 1960s onward, and his 1978 track 'Muchacho Provinciano' is the movement's anthem. In the early 1980s Los Shapis pushed Andean melodic content forward under the label 'chicha andina.' A US reissue project (Barbes Records' The Roots of Chicha, 2007–) sparked a full international rediscovery.

Start with the guitar tone: Los Mirlos's 'La Danza de los Mirlos' (1973) rides a wet, spring-reverbed melody that is almost pure Texas surf, over a Colombian cumbia 2/4 groove. Then Chacalón's vocal — phrase-endings that pinch slightly closed, a habit imported from Andean huayno singing. The lyrics are direct social commentary: migration, poverty, homesickness, the coldness of Lima to newcomers. That directness is why chicha is remembered as 'the people's music' in Peru.

Start with Los Mirlos's 'La Danza de los Mirlos' (1973), the clearest four-minute view of chicha's surf-guitar plus cumbia recipe. Then Chacalón y La Nueva Crema's 'Muchacho Provinciano' (1978), following the lyrics. Los Shapis's 'El Aguajal' (1983) shows the Andean-melodic direction. For a curated intro, Barbes Records' The Roots of Chicha (2007) remains the definitive compilation.

The word chicha refers to the Andean fermented corn drink, and the label was originally a middle-class slur before the community adopted it with pride. At Chacalón's funeral on 24 June 1994, more than 100,000 mourners filled the streets of Lima. Los Mirlos have toured Europe repeatedly since the 2010s, with a French Los Mirlos tribute-band scene now numbering more than fifty active groups.