Los Mojarras

Los Mojarras are a band from the province of El Agustino Lima Peru that formed in 1992. They released their first album in the same year, titled Sarita Colonia, and are still currently producing music and performing. Link label They have been politically active through their music, voicing political realities and views. Their music is referred to as Peruvian rock, however Luis A. Ramos-Garcia, a professor and researcher of Latin American theater and popular music from the University of Minnesota, describes their music as a “mixture of Chicha or Peruvian cumbia, Andean Cumbia, and Afro-Peruvian styling’s”. Their style of music also includes blends of rock music. Critically analyzed, the music of Los Mojarras, can be thought of as a form of transculturation, in which the emergence of mixed cultures are expressed through the mixture of musical rhythms. This type of music can also be described a form of cultural hybridity, in which the music and its scene has become a new cultural production raised out of multiple existing cultures or shared meanings. As Jesus-Martin Barbero, a researcher and philosopher, who’s disciplined in Cultural Studies; has stated “music is the result of mestizaje, the profane deformation of an authentic form.” Link label Appropriated in musical terms, mestizaje can refer to the mixtures of different music produced as a response to the formations of new social identities; and in the search of belonging by new generations of Andean migrants in capital cities. This mixture of music has primarily been played by the “decedents of migrant Andeans, who grew up and/or were born in major cities such as Lima, in Peru”. These migrants come from rural areas in Peru, moving to modernized cities often forced because of economic circumstances, exemplifying a form of local diasporic mobility. Los Mojarras lyrics range from the issues of societal displacement, dislocation of Andean migrants in major cities and working class migrant experiences and issues. Their music genre became recognized as a form of “new musical subjectivity by marginalized Urban-Andeans”, that were expressing for the first time, within chicha music that has primarily been about love or romance; anger, agency, political issues and concerns. Los Mojarras created a space for people living within the marginalized sectors of Peru. These artists also brought “ attention to the problems situated within the hegemonic Creole-Spanish model maintained by privileged classes”, and narrating through music the conflicts between Limeños and Andean migrants, that arise within the city of Lima.