On October 25th, Yep Roc Records will release Wake The Dead, Chuck Prophet’s collaborative album with the group ¿Qiensave?, marking his first foray into Cumbia music. While Chuck Prophet has always been an explorer of genres, this specific family of musical traditions captured his ear and his heart during a very difficult period in his life, having received a daunting lymphoma diagnosis, and saw him through chemotherapy and recovery. Its soulful qualities were not only restorative but piqued his curiosity. Once he was able to go to shows, he sought out Cumbia groups, and thereby met ¿Qiensave?, who allowed him to jam with them, and eventually helped him try out new songwriting ideas.
The result was Wake The Dead, an album recorded with a fair amount of fluidity and experimentation, but, importantly, a very open atmosphere for combining traditions. Chuck Prophet had his own doubts about whether he’d be out of his depth with Cumbia, but in the end, the album became a conversation about the music between ¿Qiensave? and Chuck. I spoke with Chuck Prophet about what Cumbia music meant to him during some dark hours, how he got more involved in Cumbia, and also about the ways in which people engage with new types of music in an era of digital saturation.
As far as I understand, your interest in Cumbia music goes back to a few years ago, when you were already getting into it.
I suppose. There were a few moments when it really came together. During the pandemic, I had a radio show. I had a very healthy appetite for music. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a bunch of gigs slowing me down. Normally, when it comes to music, I’m listening to what I’m working on, bu the pandemic was just wide open. So I was listening to a lot of Cumbia music. Chicha music was a part of that. Arabic music that comes out of Peru was a big part of that as well. If you drive a Volkswagen, you suddenly start seeing them everywhere, so I suddenly started hearing it everywhere! I started hearing it the taquerias, and spilling out of cars. The basslines are very identifiable.
I was listening to that music, and when I got my cancer diagnosis, there were a couple of weeks there where they couldn’t schedule me a proper scan, and nobody was talking. Which was the unfortunate part. I knew there was cancer all over my body, but I didn’t know that it was lymphoma, and I didn’t know if it was treatable. That was a pretty dark tunnel. But once they told me it was treatable, I asked if I could play some shows. I got on a plane and went to Texas with my band, and played Willie Nelson’s Luck Festival and a bunch of clubs.
I ended up driving the van back from Austin to San Francisco, and I was talking to my manager on the phone, about different bands that I was into. There was a band from Modesto, called Valley Wolf. I was listening to them. My manager was doing that thing of talking to me on the phone and looking at his computer, and he said, “Valley Wolf’s playing tomorrow night in Modesto.” I said, “I’m driving straight there!” They played on a Sunday afternoon in a gravel lot, and I watched this cool band. It just really was soulful and made me forget about my own problems for a little while.
They have a video out there for a song called “Corazon,” and it follows a kid in the video, who you see in a supermarket, where he sees a girl across the way. He ends up back at home, and making some guacamole, then he goes to a backyard barbeque where the band is playing, and he sees the girl again. I realized that the thing that’s beautiful about this culture is that it’s about food, romance, music, and family. I love all these things! It was a great time for that music to work its way into my life.
When I had my six months of chemo, it was the blues, really. Two weeks out of the month, I just threw myself on the bed, and there was no escaping it. But I had my music, and it always lifted me a little bit. It helped me get out of my head.
What was the step like between listening and wanting to play Cumbia music?
Meeting ¿Qiensave?, this group of a family of eight brothers from a farming community in Salinas, had a lot to do with that.
Wow, eight brothers!
They are actually a family of nine brothers, but not all of them are in the band. I think five of them are. Meeting those guys was a complete gift, and they were playing in the city at a place called Amano’s, I believe. My manager was there, watching the soundcheck, and he called me and said, “These guys are playing music, and it sounds kind of like the stuff you listen to.” I said, “I’m going down there!”
I watched them play, and they were glorious. They had the whole place dancing. This is something I learned from Alejandro Escovedo, who was in The Nuns, and they opened for The Sex Pistols. He was there for the Big Bang of Punk Rock, and one of the ways in which he describes Punk Rock is that it “erased the line between the stage and the audience.”
That makes a lot of sense.
I may not be able to tell you what makes something bossa nova, or a samba, or Cumbia, but I do understand people dancing. So when I played with ¿Qiensave?, we played down in Big Sur, The Mother Hips Festival, and we had the whole place dancing. It was just glorious. I don’t know how else to describe it. I wanted more of that.
It seems like in lots of traditional music from various cultures, there’s not as much differentiation between the audience and the band. Often, there’s not even a separate platform that suggests separateness.
Yes, and let’s face it, we’ve had a long run of standing on a sticky black floor, watching a bass player, two guitar players, and a drummer. That’s what The Beatles did when they came on The Ed Sullivan Show. We should look at it from a different perspective.
I think there’s something interesting that happens when our assumptions are changed up a little. With dancing, as you mention, I find that helps transfer energy in a group of people. If you’re near someone dancing, you’re more likely to start dancing.
Absolutely, and you can see that with Punk. I saw Black Flagg in the early days, at Barrington Hal, and I don’t think there was a stage. Or, for instance, at a house party, where it might be just unhinged. That’s a different way to experience the music, and it’s kind of cool. [Laughs]
For you, this is a different way of experiencing the music, too, when you started playing it, and being involved. Was it even more uplifting to take part?
Totally. But I should point out that I’m not entirely convinced that I’m doing it correctly! When I started writing these songs, I made some little demos, and I could play them on acoustic guitar. I was in Austin, and it was suggested that I go meet Adrian Quesada as a Producer, and he’s one of the guys in The Black Pumas. He’s made all kinds of Latin Rock records, and Psychedelic Cumbia. He’s just a fantastic Producer. I went to visit him in his studio in Austin, and played him some songs, and played him some stuff on the acoustic guitar.
It didn’t really work out that he Produced this, but in the end, he said, “You don’t need a Producer, man. Just do what you’re doing. You’re doing it! You’re doing your own thing, and it’s working.” He said, “If I was going to give you any advice, it would be, ‘Pay no attention to the quasi-police!’” [Laughs] Because there are people out there who will be very quick to tell you that you’re not playing it “correctly.” When I left there, I thought, “Well, I never had any problem with The Clash playing Reggae, you know?” It always sounded pretty legit to me. It either hits you, or it doesn’t.
What advice would you give to someone who’s trying to get a friend or loved on to try listening to something new, like a totally new genre? You’re clearly not someone who has limited themselves in terms of genre, even before now, so what is most necessary to encounter and appreciate new music?
I think that’s part of the live experience. Some people may say, “I don’t like that music, it’s really loud.” I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Classical concert, but if you get pretty close to a symphony, you know, it’s not quiet! That’s the live experience. If you go see a symphony at a symphony hall, and you’re experiencing that communion with other listeners, it can be pretty cool. If it helps you to get to the next step, which is that you buy a new record, and drop the needle on it, why not?
But hell, with all this streaming and everything, I throw open streaming like everyone else, and I turn on Netflix, but I just can’t commit, and I turn it off. It’s not that I think I’m too good, but I just say, “I don’t know.” I can’t click on. With the way that we consume music and the way that we consume the arts, I think the live experience is a great way in. But you’ve gotta get out there and do it.
There’s a very human thing of seeing other peoples’ reactions to something, which can influence us. It’s a window on that music. How about also seeing the band, seeing the human beings who are playing the music? That’s pretty cool, too, to create a sense of connection.
Absolutely! And it helps to have your heart in the right place, if you want to be moved.
How did you choose which songs to record for this album?
Songs just have a way of asserting themselves, and sometimes people just don’t bring them up. [Laughs] It’s the same with any record.
I know that you were quite open about the recording methods, and there wasn’t a lot of rehearsal, so there must have been a fair amount of spontaneity.
I had the songs under my fingers, and I could sing them without looking at a lyric sheet. I Produced a group called The Rubinoos a couple of years ago, and I imposed that rule on them. I said, “I want you guys standing up, and I don’t want anyone looking at any notes.”
So I was pretty prepared, compared to how I usually go into the studio, but I was also prepared to go left, or go right, or whichever way the group took us, and that happened a lot. Things just get turned inside out, or upside down really fast. A fast song becomes a slow song, or someone harmonizes, or you play a little melody, and somebody plays a counter-melody. It’s hard to describe what that kind of spontaneous combustion is like when you throw the song out, like raw meat, and everybody just jumps in. [Laughs]
You’re reminding me that I actually spoke to The Rubinoos about that album, and they told me that they were very nervous to do it that way, but they rehearsed like crazy, to get rid of the nerves.
Absolutely. The thing about The Rubinoos is that their first two records are such classics, right up there with the Big Star records. Everything they needed to know in terms of how to make a great Rubinoos record, they had already experienced. It’s, “Whatever you did for those first two records, let’s do that.” They were just a bunch of drop-outs, but they still got together and played every day, growing up as kids in Berkley. It was just practice. In a studio, they can get in there, and be themselves, and show their personalities.
Do you feel that working on this music has been part of your recovery, also, coming out of your treatment?
Yeah, I do. When I think about it, music has always been there for me. A lot of the best things that have happened to me have been through music, some of my closest friendships. It’s how I met my wife, since she was way out of my league! I think she liked the way that I played the guitar. Getting through the recovery, it was a good distraction for me. Whenever I’m listening to music, or wrestling it to the ground, or trying to get it to behave, I’m not thinking of other stuff.
Because part of all of this is that I hadn’t really given two thoughts to mortality. Now, I can see it coming towards me. I never thought about the dude! [Laughs] Now I see that he’s coming towards me, and he’s got things he wants to say. He’s closer than he was before. Here we are.
Did the other guys have a reaction to the fact that some of the songs have these darker themes of mortality?
Oh, no. I can’t imagine that. People mainly notice the words if they are bad! [Laughs] Then, it distracts them. If you’re doing your job, they fold into the music, and they are just kind of felt. Then, later, more is revealed. That’s generally how that works, I think.
