Wayku - Selva Selva (2025) [Official Digital Download]

Buh Records presents Selva Selva, the debut album by Wayku, a project led by guitarist and researcher Percy A. Flores Navarro, originally from Tarapoto, in the Peruvian Amazon. The album merges traditional and popular sounds from the jungle with contemporary approaches, placing the electric guitar at the center to explore new textures, rhythms, and expressive possibilities.

Wayku emerged in late 2022, following Flores’s experience with the ensemble Motilones de Tarapoto, and is shaped by the dialogue between rock, jazz, and Amazonian music. The album also draws from Brazilian music, tropical rhythms, and various popular expressions from the jungle, woven together into a sound that feels organic, distinctive, and constantly evolving.

According to its creator, the album seeks to renew the musical repertoire of the Amazon, adapting it to contemporary sonic languages. Selva Selva brings together three key threads of popular Amazonian music: the sounds and instruments documented in ethnographic recordings, traditional folk ensembles, and tropical jungle bands.

In addition to his musical career, Flores Navarro has conducted ethnographic research in Indigenous communities in the regions of San Martín and Loreto—experiences that have deeply informed the artistic vision of Wayku. His compositions intertwine historical narratives of Indigenous resistance with traditional aesthetics, modern harmonies, electric instruments, and symphonic elements. Selva Selva is thus a work that balances formal exploration with cultural commitment.

Across its eleven tracks, the album proposes a sonic journey through the native communities of the jungle, while also projecting cosmopolitan musical experiences, reflective of the vibrant urban landscapes of the Amazon region. Songs like “Carnaval en la selva” and “Por la marginal” offer a fresh interpretation of pandilla music, a festive popular genre from the Peruvian Amazon, characterized by its joyful rhythms, traditional flutes and percussion instruments, and its strong ties to local community celebrations. These tracks invite listeners to imagine the lively communal spaces where this music thrives—here reinterpreted through a contemporary lens.

This fusion is not new: since the 1970s, various tropical Amazonian bands have incorporated the electric guitar into pandilla, creating a distinct sound that Wayku revives and reimagines, expanding the language of what is now known as electric pandilla. At the same time, the project carries a historical and cultural discourse aimed at empowering Amazonian musicians and bringing visibility to their music on broader national and international stages.

Tracklist:
01 Chullachaqui
02 Carnaval en la selva
03 Suchiche
04 Lanta Tipina
05 La Húmisha
06 Icaro
07 Amazonas
08 Por La Márginal
09 Tambo en el monte
10 Yanapuma
11 Nación Selvática


Thanks to the Original customer!