On Saturday night, Los Mirlos wasted no time transporting the downtown Los Angeles crowd to the jungles of Peru. Dressed in green track pants and matching print shirts, the long-running band brought cumbia Amazonica to the Music Center’s Jerry Moss Plaza for a free show that kept the large, multi-ethnic and cross-generational crowd dancing for more than an hour-and-a-half to rhythms that evoke rolling rivers and rain patter.
Founded in 1973, Los Mirlos is one of the best known cumbia outfits to emerge from Peru onto the world stage. They’re the subject of the 2022 documentary, La Danza de los Mirlos. Last year, they became the first Peruvian band to play Coachella. Earlier this year, they released The World Meets Los Mirlos, a collection of collaborations with artists that include Colombian pop star Juanes, London-based psych cumbia band Los Bitchos, Puerto Rican rapper Guaynaa and American rock outfit 311. Saturday night’s concert came in the midst of a U.S. tour that runs through early September.
Los Mirlos is often referred to as a psychedelic cumbia band, maybe because their style of guitar playing tends to fall somewhere in between Dick Dale and Carlos Santana. But, psychedelic also makes sense because it’s implied that the music is pushing you to a place where you’re visualizing the sound. In a recent interview in Rolling Stone en Español, band leader Jorge Rodgriguez Grández talked about channeling the sound of the Amazon into their music. The jungle is something you can see in your mind’s eye when you’re listening to Los Mirlos, even if you, like me, have only seen the Peruvian Amazon in David Attenborough-narrated documentaries. The band is known for mimicking birdsongs in the music (los mirlos means “the blackbirds,” btw), but if you listen close you might swear you heard animal footsteps, insects buzzing, water flowing over rocks or rain rustling through leaves.
Seeing Los Mirlos live, though, is a less contemplative experience. It is, from the start until the end, a dance party, one where everyone is invited. This is music that defies the very narrow marketing demographics that dictate what we hear via online platforms. The band’s signature songs, like “La Danza de los Mirlos (Cumbia de los Pajaritos),” can pack the floor with 21-year-olds at a club. It will also get all the local seniors up on their feet at El Pueblo on any given afternoon. I’ve witnessed both scenarios multiple times.
Even language is no barrier for the beat. You don’t have to know what “saltado sin parar” means when you look around and see that everyone is jumping nonstop. At the Music Center on Saturday night, the crowd was old and young, straight and gay, Latino and not. There were couples getting down and tiny kids scurrying through the crowd with parents lagging behind them. The young and hip bopped around, but I doubt few could keep up with the gray-haired man near me who looked to be at least in his 60s, but had the energy of someone 40 years younger.
Los Mirlos played their classics, like “La Danza de los Mirlos,” along with more recent songs like “Un Traguito de Ayahuasca” and covers, including “A Patricia,” from Los Destellos, the Peruvian cumbia band that was an influence on Los Mirlos. The set was not all that different from how DJs structure a dance night, with the tempo rising to a hands-in-the-air peak and then dipping when everyone needs a breather.
The spotlight may have been on Los Mirlos, but, really, the show was about everyone sandwiched on the Plaza dance floor. It’s an old school way of thinking, especially in this hyper-individualistic era that we’re in, but the show is about the energy that’s transferred back and forth between the people on stage and the people in the crowd. It’s not a thing you’re watching, like content on your phone, but something you’re actively participating in and that’s what came through when Los Mirlos played L.A.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
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