A.Chal’s latest song “Pituko” is a postcolonial track with a punk element not simply for its lyrics but the cultural and social production around it, which is a consequence of and projection of the cultural contours of A.Chal’s life. A.Chal, whose real name is Alejandro Chal Salazar, is a Lima-born artist who disrupts many of the postcolonial conditions of Peru and broader Latin America with his song “Pituko.”
The title of the track refers to a term used to describe Peru’s upper social class, an often racialized urbanite of the big city, someone with privilege and access, if not already, closely associated with whiteness. A Pituko, as with other similar terms such as “fresa” commonly used in Mexico, is the westernized dweller, the one who consumes western customs and cultures while distancing themselves from the historically subjugated masses. Having migrated to the United States at a young age, Alejandro had the opportunity to return to Peru as a pituko, albeit a bit more trigueño, or of darker complexion. His western education and fluency in English would have given him the cultural capital allowing him access to spaces of privilege. Yet this was not A.Chal.
Disrupting Peru’s Colonial Social Imaginary
A track’s subversive and punk elements need not necessarily be defined by its lyrics but can be captured in the social production behind it. Songs in themselves can become metaphors and provide commentary on social histories, lived realities and disruptive existences. To understand the disruptive and punk elements of “Pituko,” it’s worth knowing a bit of Peru’s history and social relations as a postcolonial society.
To understand the disruptive and punk elements of “Pituko,” it’s worth knowing a bit of Peru’s history and social relations as a postcolonial society.
Today, Peru remains a socially and economically stratified country. At the top are the descendents of the Spanish creole class, referred to as criollo, whose culture is most often used to represent “Peruvianess” at the exclusion of Indigenous peoples. This social class maintains a hegemony over the country’s cultural production, from which its cuisine, musical traditions, and other cultural practices are thought to exclusively emanate. Appropriating some African-traditions, as well as some selective memories of the Incan past, criollismo is in essence a collective milieu of the postcolonial condition. The cultural wealth of criollos is derived from their racial identity and vice versa, what Franz Fanon referred to as the colonial superstructure. At the margins, or “Peru Profundo,”are the “Indios,” a proto-class seen as being outside of the historical timeline. In this imaginary, writes the Peruvian historian Cecilia Mendez, “The Indian is accepted, therefore, insofar as he represents a scenic milieu and distant glory. He is ‘wise’ if abstract and long-departed, like Manco Capac. He is a brutish or ‘ stupid’ and ‘ impure’ and ‘ vandal-like if present.” The term “cholo” has historically marked this difference, the notable “other,” provincial and “not yet modern,” referring to the indigenous and mestizo migrant who is forced to travel to the urban core. The term has been used to racially mark an individual, but has overtime been reclaimed, producing subversive subcultures such as chicha.
According to scholar M. Cristina Alcalde “in postcolonial societies, social power continues to be organized and exerted as a result of the structures and practices developed through centuries of colonialism. The living conditions in postcolonial societies are thus informed by persistent unequal colonialist structures within which some identities and experiences are valued over others.” This is the narrative that A.Chal’s new track completely upends. Alejandro Chal Salazar’s work becomes a mode of postcolonial resistance where his artistry, now in full actualization after leaving the corporate record label Sony, has taken up an inversion of the typical rural-urban migration which undergirded the postcolonial reality of Peru. This inversion is captured in the track “Pituko” which synthesizes this postcolonial journey not just in its lyrics but in its very essence.
A New Postcolonial Sound
After migrating from Peru at the age of 4, A.Chal was raised in Queens, New York. It was there where he met his first love: Hip-hop. At the time, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hip-Hop was not yet fully captured by corporate record labels who would later make a profit off the glorification of violence. Instead, the genre was still providing social commentary and Queens had commandeered the rap throne from the Bronx with acts like Mobb Deep, Capone-N-Noreaga, and Nas reflecting on the lived realities in the periphery of Manhattan during the peak of neoliberalism. In itself a postcolonial genre during its early days, Hip-hop was at this point 20 years into its popular disruption from below. Reinvention defined it.
In deciding to leave behind the over-saturated genre of soulful pop in the mainstream for huayno, A.Chal rejects the aesthetics and appeal of western media to find himself in la provincia
“Pituko” has been described as a “huayno-ton” or “huayno-pop.” At the root of this portmanteau is Huayano, the most popular Andean genre of music. Huayanos are distinct for their high-pitched vocals infused with Andean wind and modern string instruments, often with elements of electric piano. The themes are often melancholic, about lost loves, and generally the struggles on the campos in the Andes. The dominant criollo class in Peru has historically associated the genre of music with “backwardness” and lewd behaviours. Inverting this perception, A.Chal evokes cocky confidence from his hip-hop roots, producing an unapologetic hook, “Yo soy terco y feliz,” (I am stubborn and happy) referring to the stereotype of the “stubborn” Andean or indigenous person. He appropriates stereotypes and inverts them, giving the cholo a renewed confidence and autonomy. The rest of the lyrics are playful and celebratory, describing a casual liaison, braggadocious confidence and other themes most often associated with modern Hip-hop, not the melancholic worldview of the Andes. Thus these lyrics and aesthetic produce a distortion of the colonial condition, a postcolonial aesthetic whereby a “western” artist makes the conscious decision to produce a neo-huayno.
In deciding to leave behind the over-saturated genre of soulful pop in the mainstream for huayno, A.Chal rejects the aesthetics and appeal of western media to find himself in la provincia. This rejection of the mainstream and return to a popular (in the grassroot definition of the term) is a kind of “genre suicide.” In A.Chal’s case, the artist had been disconnected from his roots and commercialized early on in his career, inadvertently distancing himself from his authentic self. The last few years would be spent reinventing himself and turning to his origins where he spent time in the campos or rural areas of Trujillo, a kind of class suicide where he detached himself from the privilege that had disconnected the intellectual–in this case the artist–from the people. He signals this in the title of his song, ironically named after the privileged social class of Peru.
A.Chal’s reinvention of the huayno sound is a conscious choice. A.Chal returns to his roots and the huaynos that his family would share with him during his childhood in Trujillo as well as in the formative years he spent in Queens, producing a neo-huayno sound. In doing so, he disrupts the prevailing narrative that Huaynos cannot be “modern” or that anyone with an opportunity to produce western style music would always take that route. Like the Andean cosmovision where the past informs the future, A.Chal took to his roots to find an innovative postcolonial sound.
George Ygarza is a translator, popular educator, and postdoctoral researcher at Binghamton University. He is also a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine.