Agua Marina: Fisherman’s family from Buera conquers Peru thanks to great cumbias | ARE

The story begins one afternoon in May 1970, a quiet provincial Sunday, with four Byron children happily playing in the streets of Simpot. Everything seemed to be going on with the usual calm, and like any day’s games, out of nowhere, the ground began to shake. A few years ago, the Quiroga brothers (Jose, Manuel, Teofilo and Luis) followed their fisherman father to the capital of Ancash from Sechura. They were prosperous times of the anchovy boom and they had built a house made of noble materials. However, they did not enjoy it much because of the earthquake. When they arrived at their block, they found the entire neighborhood on the ground. Despite the cracks, only his house was standing. As a result of the disaster that destroyed Ankash, they had to make the journey back to Sechura, and on that bitter return, as a sign of consolation, they discovered an object in a relative’s house that would change their path forever. It’s a guitar.

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Manuel was the first of the brothers to learn to play it. Before long, he was already playing in small groups in the city, hosting parties with his older brother Jose Quiroga. After six years, they began to think about their future with greater certainty, without being bound by school. His father sold a yacht and his mother sold the family jewels to buy their first professional instruments. Another equally important issue needs to be addressed. If they are going to devote themselves seriously to music, finding a good name is one of the key points. Sabana Group? Children of the desert? They don’t like anything. Until another of his cousins ​​came up with a suggestion that sounded like a revelation: “His music is different, it has calm moments, and it has agitated moments. “It’s like sea water!”

On that day, August 30, 1976, Agua Marina was born, one of the country’s most beloved groups and responsible for re-popularizing cumbia on Peruvian radio in the nineties, with the extraordinary hit “Tu amor fue una lie”. In 1998 there was a ‘boom’ in FM radio of astronomical proportions, which was not common then.

The DJs of the time, always prolific in creating labels, baptized their music without trumpets as “technocumbia” because of the digital sound. But this trait of his arose out of necessity rather than an aesthetic decision. ‘At first, we had a wind section like any cumbia orchestra, but what happened was some of them weren’t very professional. “They missed the concerts, and then all the wind players began to be recruited into their war bands, and Piara suddenly ran out of trumpet players,” recalls José Quiroca, Agua Marina’s bassist and singer. To make up for the lack of wind players, they resorted to the aggressive frequencies of a synthesizer they bought in Ecuador, and They assured me it belonged to the Swedish group ABBA.

Agua Marina’s unique sound emerged, heard in their best hits like “Paloma Agena”, “Posidos para Baile”, “Azí s el Amor”, “Amor Prohibito”, “Cenizas” and many others. Although they were lumped together with a battalion of groups from the era such as Rossi War, Ana Koehler, Ruth Karina and Euphoria, the group still dislikes the term ‘technocumbia’. It won’t convince them. They consider themselves a cumbia group.

to the victory of Peru

After a session on the beach, sit down at a cozy cebicheria in Sechura There are, the Quiroga brothers meet to reflect on their incredible adventure, where skill and luck played equal parts. For example, their first record deal in 1986 with the Infopesa label in Lima came to them as a last-minute blessing, but at a bad time: four songs in their set were not ready. In Lima, they were given 15 days to learn ten more songs so they could record a full album. “We had to run around looking for songs, seeing which composers were available, arranging recording time to come to Lima to record and rehearse,” they recalled. This is how Agua Marina’s “Volume 1” was born.

Lima’s success was slow. In the 80s and early 90s, they were brought to play in Gallo or the northern part of the city. For this reason, they gave an unforgettable concert in the Krav tent, in the Victorian temple, the symbol of the Andean tropical cumbia, Lorenzo Palacios, opening the ‘Chacalon’. That day, the Quirogas waited with impatience and uncertainty to learn how their proposal would be received. Krav tent audiences were very demanding and had very creative ways of expressing their displeasure. “To our surprise, we were informed that ‘Chackalon’ had decided to leave before us. There, we realized that 90% of the audience at the Krav tent were from the North, our audience who had come to see us.

Agua Marina is part of the elite of northern tropical music, the so-called Cumbia Trilogy, completed by Piurans Armonia 10 (‘university of cumbia’) and Grupo 5 de Monsefú. They are very primitive in operation. During the last pandemic, they made a significant gesture with their Siglean colleagues when they jointly recorded the single “Stay at Home” to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease that claimed one of the members of Agua Marina, Tomás Espejo. . “The pandemic has affected us all in different ways. As a group, we did a tour in Europe that we canceled when the flights closed. Then I became depressed. One day, my son found me crying at home. We thought it was the end of everything,” Jose Quiroca says of those troubled days.

But even in those moments of frustration, the group showed solidarity and empathy with their audience, who were not having a good time. They proved it in New Year 2021 when they decided to host a concert with free streaming to celebrate the year-end celebrations at the homes of their followers. “The truth is, we did it out of love, and it didn’t seem appropriate to charge for it at a time when everyone was dying,” notes Jose, though they respect other artists’ decisions to offer paid concerts at the time. For them, it was an investment in their relationship with fans. The event took place at his Sechura farm, full of carob trees planted by his mother, Paulina, who died a few years ago. To ensure a stable connection, remote population areas had to lay fiber optic cables themselves. On the day of the show, 56,000 people waited online and in their homes to dance. When the moment came, Manuel picked up his guitar and felt nervous, as if he were standing in a stadium, even though he was surrounded only by his brothers, the quiet silence typical of streaming broadcasts. To keep calm, he surrendered himself to his mother. That feeling made them play like never before. //