Since its official founding in 2001, the band Novalima has championed a driving, tuneful electronic and, at times, hard-rocking expression of Afro-Peruvian music. After the release of their third album, Coba Coba in 2008, they began touring the world, winning awards and accolades at home and abroad. Along the way, they became one of the most engaging and joyful live acts on the circuit. As they prepare to return to the U.S. for a short 2025 tour, we look back on a conversation we had with co-founder Ramón Perez Prieto when they last visited our shores in 2023. Novalima has recently released the “deluxe” edition of their two-part opus La Danza, initially released as two separate EPs. The album is a tour de force, marshalling all their diverse influences in a kaleidoscopic song cycle that showcases the band’s enormous growth over the past quarter century. Sean Barlow spoke with Ramón Perez Prieto shortly before their show at Drom in New York City. The first set of La Danza tracks had just dropped.
Live photos by Banning Eyre.
Sean Barlow: Ramón, thanks for speaking with me. I’m looking forward to the show. To start, tell me the story of Novalima, in brief.
Ramón Perez Prieto: Ok. So we had been making music, the four of us musicians, since the late ’80s. We went through rock and then by the late ’90s we realized that it was really hard to make a living out of music so we decided to study professional careers and keep music as a hobby.
What did you study?
I started studying business administration in New York. When I went back to live in Lima, Grimado went to Barcelona, Rafael went to London and Carlos Vicario went to Hong Kong. And that’s when we got on our phones: “Are you making music? Let’s make a project, a studio project.” And that’s how we ended up making the first Novalima album, at a distance, you know. Eventually, we did the second album, Afro, in 2006 and we signed with the Mr. Bongo Label. They told us, “Well, now you’re going on tour,” and that’s where we had to build up the band because there was no band at all. And that’s where the real history started, you know. Now we have six albums, we are releasing our seventh now. We have more than 15 years together, and we are gratefully traveling around the world.
Excellent. Can you introduce your musicians and tell us what they play?
Okay, so we have Milagros Guerrero, the vocalist, and she’s Peruvian. In fact, all of us are Peruvians. Then we have Constantino Alvarez who plays the timbales and cajon, and we have Alfonso Montesinos, who plays the bass. We also have Marcos Mosquera on congas, Rafael Morales on guitar, Grimado de Solar doing the beats and myself on keyboards. That’s the seven-piece band. Sometimes we are eight, but today we’re seven.
Let’s talk about the music on La Danza. How did you make this album?
Well, because of COVID and the shutdown of everything, we did it a little bit as in old times when we had to record things at our homes, you know, and then build up everything together, bringing the pieces together. So the album was actually generated during COVID and then we finished mixing it and mastering. For this album, we tried new rhythms. We always try to get a new sound. We try to evolve our music, obviously. And we had a lot of interesting collaborations with musicians we met during COVID. We had the opportunity to go to Mexico a lot. So we collaborated with Paulina Sotomayor, “Pahua.” I don’t know if you have heard her. She’s a colleague from the label we were with before, Wonder Wheel. And we collaborated too with Dom La Nena (Brazilian cellist, singer and songwriter). The second part with six more tracks is coming out by the end of September (2023). So it’s gonna be our La Danza Part One and Part Two. So we’re gonna promote this album for the next year, and start working on the next one because we’re always in the studio, getting new ideas.
That’s a good strategy to give people six songs, wait a few months, and then give them another six songs as opposed to doing everything at once
Yes. Especially because the industry has changed, the habits of the consumer have changed. I mean, I’m an old-timer. I’m an old-school guy. I like to buy the album, the vinyl, I like to look into the sleeve, who played, who recorded. The kids don’t care about that anymore. And if you get an album out now on Spotify, even if you only get one splash of it… How do you call it? One moment? So we wanted to do it in two moments, but even before that, we’ve been releasing one single, second single, and then the release. And we’re gonna do the same for the second part, to have more time and be more frequent on Spotify, which in the end is the leader of platforms.
So you’re definitely trying to follow the taste and habits of young music fans.
Actually, our proposal was always to preserve the traditional Afro-Peruvian rhythms, but to give it a newer twist, a more contemporary sound, trying to appeal to the newer crowds, because it was getting lost in its primitive way. Myself, I always looked up to Western music, rock ‘n roll, and all that stuff. I wasn’t much interested in our Peruvian culture while I was growing up, but then when I got to live outside of Peru, I started appreciating it more. And the idea of making Novalima was to renew our sound, our cultural sound.
That’s such a familiar story. For instance, Hugh Masekela from South Africa. As a young man, he went to New York and tried to play jazz and everyone said, “You’re South African, why don’t you play South African music?” And he did, and that’s how he became hugely famous.
We were lucky to meet him at a festival, actually, several years ago. Wonderful!
People describe you as Afro-Peruvian and electronica. Is that a fair description?
Actually, it’s more of a fusion. Electronica in the end is like one more instrument for us. I mean, I could tell you we’ve replaced the drum player with electronic beats, but we also use samples because we cannot bring a 40-piece band. It’s impossible, no? So we use it as a tool and as an instrument. But if you listen to our live act and also the albums, it’s a mixture of a lot of rhythms, but in the end, you can hear the DNA, which is the cajon and the Afro-Peruvian instruments that really mark our sound.
Let’s talk about that. My education in Afro-Peruvian music came through Susana Baca who came here first with David Byrne, and kind of led the way. On the lead track, “La Danza,” I’m hearing Afro Peruvian percussion, including the donkey jaw, right?
Oh yeah.
Tell us us about “La Danza.”
On that song, you hear the cajon, la quijada de burro (donkey’s jaw) and la cajita (little box), which are the three instruments we travel with, okay? La quijada, the donkey’s jaw, was brought during the times of slavery in Peru, and the reason it was used… Well, actually this comes from Africa because I’ve investigated and I know that in Haiti they also use the donkey’s jaw as an instrument. And the cajita, the little box, was used in the Christian church to collect the money. Then the last one, the most famous one, is the cajon, which was actually a crate for picking up fruit. So during then night when the masters would go to sleep, the slaves would get all these instruments together. They would get the donkey jaw, and the little box from the church and start making music all night, because they were prohibited from preserving their culture and having their music. So these three instruments have been the DNA of the Peruvian sound throughout 400 years.
Great, because most people don’t think of Peru as an African-based country. We think more of Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, but of course the Spanish and indigenous and African sides exist in all these countries. Let’s come back to “La Danza.” Tell me more about that song.
Well, in that song the lyrics speak about life. It’s a metaphor between life and the dance. We talk about how to live your life just the way you dance. Because when you dance, you liberate yourself. You’re really passionate, or pure with what you’re feeling at that moment, no? So we try to combine these two ways of looking at life. And we did a really rootsy job with that track because, as you were telling me, there’s a lot of percussion going on. It’s an old rhythm called a festejo. It’s a little less fast than other tracks we have, but it makes the sound more heavy, you know? As I was telling you, we have a rock ‘n roll past, so we like to combine all this stuff in our music.
Let’s talk about another track with striking percussion, “Hatajo.” What is going on there?
Well, you have the cajita again. And the rhythm? Actually, it’s another festejo, but it’s much faster than the one in “La Danza.” And the particular part about this song is that we also have a violin going on. What happened is that when the Spaniards brought the viceroy to Peru, they also brought their culture, and eventually Afro-Peruvian music was blended with violins and guitars, and we tried to rescue that tradition in this song. For the little guitar, we had the opportunity to invite Miki Gonzales, who is a great guitar player from Peru. He was actually the first one to blend rock ‘n roll with Afro during the ’80s. He’s a friend of ours and we had the opportunity to collaborate with him on this song. We also have all of us, Cotito, Milagros, Marco, all these guys doing the voices. And we have a new girl we discovered, a rapper from Peru. Her name is La Mamba, and she collaborated on this song and on other on La Danza. We always look for collaborations with the old school and the new school, because it’s really important to mix all these feelings.
Definitely. Let’s talk about the song “Nación.” It’s a slower, heavier groove on that one.
Okay, “Nación” was made during the COVID time, and during our political issues. The lyrics are based on the situation we were having during the elections when the country was polarized. There was half of the country voting for the left side, and half of the country voting for the right side, and neither of the sides was good. We had to elect the less, how do you call it? The lesser evil. And well, eventually we ended up electing one of the evils. Anyhow, any of them would harm us. We eventually elected the guy that is now in jail, Pedro Castillo. So that song talks about unity, about what division brings. We have to hold on together to get past this. We have a lot of generations of politicians that have been corrupted. Since I was born in the ’70s, we’ve had a military government. This is what I’ve lived in my life, but I want to say, “We can always get out from it, eventually.” So the song is about those times, the hard times we had in Peru. But it is a message of unity in a sense.
Then there’s the song “El Tiempo,” which has a beautiful female vocal.
Yes. That’s Dom la Nena, the Brazilian artist. She is on Six Degrees, our label. And actually, we got to know her because she asked us to make a remix for a song she had with Julieta Venegas, which is called “Quién Podrá Saberlo.” So we did this remix for her. This was in 2022. Actually, I hadn’t heard her before. But when I made this track “El Tiempo,” we were looking for a vocalist, and when I heard her voice, it was like, “Wow!” So we sent along the lyrics without any melody because I like the performer to make their first try at the song with her natural feel. We usually make the lyrics with the melody, but in this instance, you know, since she was a girl and the lyrics were made by a man, I wanted to let her flow. And she returned a melody that was different from the one I had made, and that’s how we came up with this beautiful song. After that, Captain Planet made a remix for us. He’s a DJ/producer from L.A., great guy.
You like collaborators and remixers. Talk about those relationships.
Every time we release an album, we do the original tracks and then we invite collaborators–DJ’s, producers, artists, musicians that we know if they want to make their own versions of a track. In this case, we started making the remixes for La Danza, and Captain Planet was one of the guys who did a remix for “El Tiempo.” Eventually we’re gonna get an album of remixes La Danza.
I’m looking forward to that. Now, on another song, “Pura,” I’m hearing a guitar that sounds to me like Tuareg, northern Malian guitar.
It’s our guitarist, Raphael Morales. It’s his guitar, processed guitar, emulating a little bit of the riffs of Mali, a little bit of that sound. It’s because we listen to music from all over. And on that song, La Dan Blanche did the vocals and did this beautiful arrangement, and she did a little rap and it came out fabulous.
They’ve taken up the tables for your show tonight. There will be dancing.
Always. Usually our live act goes from less to more, but we’re really energetic and the show is made for dancing. People eventually end up dancing because all the African rhythms make make your legs shake whether you dance or not.
There is one song I love from a previous album of yours, Planetario. It’s “Bete Kele.” Tell me about that.
Well, that song made around 2015, and the idea I had about this was looking into our roots, going back to Africa. Most of the slaves that were brought to Peru came from the Congo. So I looked for some words in Congolese, and I translated them, you know, so that’s why I say, “Beto kele, múno kele,” which means, “They are; we are; we all are.” It was a little bit of trying to go back to the roots of where our music comes from.
It’s funny you ask me this, because this year in April we were in Mexico, and we played with Jupiter and Okwess. Jupiter came over, and we started speaking through a translator, Cedric, our agent, because he speaks French. Jupiter told me, “Yeah, man, I recognized Congolese. How did it come in there?” And well, we started talking about that, and the idea that I had, and that has developed. Now that we know each other, I have a song I’m preparing for him to sing in Congolese, in Lingala.
That would be great.
Well, the Congolese diaspora is just awesome. Of course the two strongest forces in Cuba were Yoruba from the 1820s when their kingdom fell apart and slaves were able to be attacked and also the Kongo Kingdom. And then, of course, Cuban music was played in the 1940s and 50s in Africa and re-Africanized by the Congolese. At first, they were just singing phonetically in Spanish, but they couldn’t really speak Spanish. They just imitated the sound of Spanish and then re-Africanized it and made it rumba and soukous, but it all comes through the Cuba-Congo conversation. So the Congolese made it to Peru too.
Yeah, yeah. The ancestors.
What’s the cultural music scene in Lima like these days?
Well, there’s a new generation, younger kids, in their 20s, maybe 30s. There’s a lot of indie rock going on, a little bit of electronics, like Dengue, Dengue, Dengue. Maybe you’ve heard about them. But yeah, the music scene has grown a lot since we were in the game when we were young. It’s a whole different game for these guys because they have all the technology available. Even schools and universities now have professional musician career training. So there’s a lot more opportunity. The thing we lack in Lima actually is venues to play in, because there are not many. But still, there’s a good scene growing. There are good bands and not so good bands, but the scene is actually getting bigger.
And what about the Afro-Peruvian community in Lima? How big is it? Do they have their own music, their own clubs, or do they integrate with everybody?
Well, it’s not really big. They have started to integrate. They are main players in entertainment. Whenever you want to go out in Lima, at least somebody’s gonna be playing Afro Peruvian music somewhere, so it’s present. So it exists, and the new scene of Afro Peruvian music is really interesting. There are a lot of new musicians banging on percussion, and there are really good singers. We have a good generation coming up.
I mentioned Susana Baca. How do you see her role as an International Ambassador for Afro-Peru? Did she inspire you?
Yeah, of course. Susana Baca has always been an inspiration for us. We met her in Barcelona, and that’s when we met (vocalist Juan Medrano) Cotito and invited him to the Novalima project. Susana Baca has always been a reference for Afro-Peruvian music internationally. She’s opened a lot of opportunities for musicians. Nowadays, she’s more into the traditional, but I think in that way, she’s opened the way for fusions like ours as Novalima, and also new music that’s coming out with Afro-Peruvian DNA.
How big is the Afro-Peruvian population? Ten percent?
No. Two percent. In the thousands maybe. Very small. But they have integrated now. They used to be isolated long ago. After slavery was ended, they were isolated either south of Lima or up north on the coast. But nowadays, they’re spread all over. It was never a huge community, but it has been maintained and, well, luckily, we’ve been able to have them around, because they have contributed a lot to our culture, musically, artistically, in the food. Everywhere.
What about spirituality? Is there an African-derived religion in Peru?
No, really, no. They’re all Christian. They were captured during the Viceroy era, and eventually they all became Christians. Actually, the song “Hatajo” is a mixture of Christian culture, Andean culture, and Black culture. The Hatajo de Negritos.
Is that the name of a style?
It’s a dance that they do. They go from town to town with a lot of dancers celebrating a special Catholic date. They usually go into the Andes too. That’s where they mix, and that’s why it’s known to be a reintegrational dance where you have the Catholics, the Black culture, and the Andean culture mixing up.
Oh, that’s very interesting.
It is. As they march from town to town, they’re making music as they walk. The family that is famous for doing this for the past 60 years is the Ballumbrosio family. They are from Chinche, south of Lima and they’ve been maintaining this tradition for the past 60 years
I wonder if there are any recordings of that out there.
There are recordings, and videos. It still goes on. Well, everything that had a pause during the COVID, but it still happens. It’s called Hitajo.
So beyond La Danza, what you guys dreaming about doing next?
Well, we’re always making music. So, after the La Danza Part Two gets released, we’re already working on new tracks. We usually make an album every three years, but now we want to make that space shorter, because of what I was telling you. The industry is changing, you know? So you gotta be there. Try to be always on the radar. That’s the way that people ar consuming music nowadays.
Well, Ramón, thank you very much, and thanks for the music. It was a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you, and congratulations on the 25 years of Afropop.
