Los Defensores – Pandilla (Dengue Dengue Dengue Remix) taken from Humos EP Vol. 3, the last part of the vinyl release series celebrating 10th anniversary of @dengue
The story of this track dates back to 2015 when during my stay in Peru I got to spend a week in Lamas, a lovely town in the Peruvian part of the Amazon rainforest. One day, while waiting for food in the nearby village called Tabalosos, I suddenly heard very raw and intensive music based on fast percussive rhythms that seemed endless. Until that point I was rather surrounded by salsa, cumbia, reggaeton and música criolla so such vigorous sound came to me as a total shock and got me hooked instantly. It turned out that this music was pandilla, a queen of Amazonian folklore.
Thanks to Nelly Valverde and her family I got my hands on a CD filled with over eight hours of pandilla recordings. Fortunately I kept it safe, subconsciously understanding the great value of this material. Few months later I started Basy Tropikalne (back then operating simply as a radio show only) and some time after that I began searching for information about pandilla – which turned out to be almost nonexistent in English and very limited even in Spanish. I fantasized how amazing it would be to translate it into electronic music and hence introduce a new, completely fresh genre. In order to be culturally consistent I thought that it should be done by Peruvian producers – and when you think of electronic music and Peru, Dengue Dengue Dengue come into your head first.
Amazingly enough, the duo liked the idea and after our first meeting in real life in early 2018 it became clear that the project will be continued. It was firstly announced to the public later that year when Dengue Dengue Dengue got to perform at the opening night of the world-renowned Unsound Festival with a special show that focused on this concept of pandilla explorations – it was the first time that this genre was presented to a broader audience outside of Peru.
The track that we are premiering here opens another chapter by showcasing pandilla in the environment of electronic music within an official release. It was based on the recording of a group from Tarapoto called Los Defensores and it cleverly highlights the crucial elements of the genre – melodies played on wind instrument in very high notes and steady percussive sections – turning the song into a mesmerizing gem.
