Chuck Prophet & His Cumbia Shoes

Prophet’s streak of more than a dozen critically acclaimed solo albums stretches all the way back to 1990, when he first shifted focus from his pioneering neo-psych band, Green on Red, to working under his own name. Rolling Stone dubbed him a “streetwise city kid with an eye for the country,” while Uncut proclaimed him a “renaissance-rocker,” andNPR declared that “no one can turn tales from the outer limits into catchy songs quite like Prophet does.”
Wake The Dead, Chuck Prophet’s extraordinary—and unlikely—new album, was recorded with ¿Qiensave?, a band of brothers from the Central Coast farming community of Salinas, California. The collection dives headfirst into the world of Cumbia music. The songs are intoxicatingly rhythmic, all but demanding you move your body while you listen, with arrangements that blur the lines between tradition and innovation, between past and present, between cultures and countries. There are flashes of rock and roll, punk, surf, and soul, all filtered through the streets of San Francisco and wrapped up in the rich legacy of a genre that traces its roots back hundreds of years and thousands of miles.