Chuck Prophet & His Cumbia Shoes

Wake The Dead – California singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer Chuck Prophet’s new collaborative album with Cumbia group ¿Qiensave? – was released on October 25th through Yep Roc Records.
An extraordinary and unlikely pairing, Prophet and ¿Qiensave? blend seamlessly together as the collection dives headfirst into the world of Cumbia music, which consumed and comforted Prophet during a recent bout with stage four lymphoma and subsequent recovery. They also shared the album’s lead single and title track “Wake The Dead,” an anthem that reckons with forces beyond our control while learning to let go, a recurring theme at the core of the album.
The result is a profoundly adventurous celebration of life that balances hope and fear in equal measure, a rich and exultant meditation on what really matters from an artist who always manages to find the light, even in the face of the most oppressing darkness. Prophet approaches the style not as an academic or historian, but as a fan with a voracious appetite and an insatiable curiosity. 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.

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